NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue is welcomed at the airport. (Photo: VNA) The delegation was welcomedat the Auckland International Airport byVietnamese Ambassador to New Zealand Nguyen Van Trung, the Vietnamese Embassy’sstaff and representatives of the New Zealand government and Auckland city’s administration.
During the visit from December 3-7, Hue isscheduled to hold talks with Adrian; meetwith senior leaders of New Zealand; attend Vietnam-New Zealand educational andeconomic cooperation forums; meet with the embassy’s staff and representatives ofthe Vietnamese community; and have several other activities.
New Zealand is a strategic partner of Vietnam in South Pacific, withthe bilateral ties growing in different fields. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic,the exchange of delegations was suspended during 2021-2022 but high-levelconversations have been still maintained and bilateral cooperation mechanismshave been deployed in both online and offline forms.
The 2021-2024 Action of Plan with New Zealand to realisethe bilateral strategic partnership has seen positive results.
In economic terms, Vietnam and New Zealand areboth members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-PacificPartnership (CPTPP) and the Regional Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP). NewZealand is now the 36th largest trading partner of Vietnam. Two-way tradereached 1.3 billion USD last year, up 26.7% year-on-year. The figure increasedby 13.6% year on year to 1.1 billion USD in the first nine months of this year.
New Zealand also approved the supply of ODA worth26.7 million NZD for Vietnam during 2021-2024, equivalent to the sum in the2018-2021 period. The country also supplied 30,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses and 2million NZD in post-pandemic relief aid to Vietnam.
There remains ample room to further boostcoordination in national defence, security, education-training, labour andagriculture. In particular, the two countries are interested in new cooperationareas such as climate change response, digital transformation and energytransition.
Though few visits were paid due to COVID-19,leaders of the two legislatures still maintained all-level meetings on thesidelines of regional and international conferences.
At regional and gblobal inter-parliamentaryforums, the two countries’ delegations of lawmakers regularly discussed andsupported each other on regional and national issues of mutual concern. The15th Vietnamese NA continued to establish the Vietnam - New Zealand FriendshipParliamentarians’ Group and maintained information exchange with the NewZealand Embassy in Vietnam.
Aiming to deploy the foreign policy of the13th National Party Congress, the visit is of important significanceas it is the first trip to New Zealand bya senior Vietnamese leader since the two countries fully reopened their doors followingthe pandemic and also the first made by Hue in his capacity as Chairman of theVietnamese NA./.
VNA
