Chairwoman of the National Assembly Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan leaves Hanoi on December 8 for official visits to Russia and Belarus. (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – Chairwoman of the National Assembly Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan and a high-ranking delegation ofthe Vietnamese NA left Hanoi onDecember 8 for official visits toRussia and Belarus.
Her visit toRussia is made from December 8 – 11 at the invitation of Chairwoman of theFederation Council V. Matviyenko and Chairman of the State Duma of Russia V. Volodin.
She willvisit Belarus from December 12 – 14 atthe invitation of Chairman of theCouncil of the National Assembly Mikhail Myasnikovich and Chairman of the Houseof Representatives of the National Assembly Vladimir Andreichenko.
She is beingaccompanied by Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue and Vice Chairman of theNational Assembly Uong Chu Luu, among other senior officials.
They areNgan’s first visits to Russia and Belarus as a NA Chairwoman, which areexpected to further bolster the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Russia, and traditional friendship and multi-faceted relations with Belarus andenhance cooperation between the Vietnamese NA and the Russian and Belarusianlegislatures.
Vietnam andRussia set up diplomatic tiesin 1950. The two countries established a strategic partnership in 2001and upgraded it to the level of comprehensive strategic partnership in 2012.
The two sideshave maintained a number of cooperation and dialogue mechanisms, such as theannual strategic dialogue on diplomacy, defence and security at deputy foreignministerial level and the strategic defence dialogue at deputy ministeriallevel.
TheVietnam-Russia trade mounted to 4.5 billion USD in 2018, a 28.5-percent increase from a year earlier. Thebilateral trade reached 3.4 billion USD in the first nine months of this year.Vietnam mainly exported phones, clothing, agricultural products and seafood toRussia while importing oil and petroleum, steel, fertiliser and machinery.
As of February2019, Vietnam had been home to 127 FDI projects run by Russia, worth more than950 million USD, mostly in mining, oil and gas, manufacturing and processing.
Vietnam hadinvested nearly 3 billion USD in projects in Russia, such as joint ventureRusvietpetro and TH Group’s hi-tech dairy farming project.
VNA
