President Truong Tan Sang urged Vietnam and Laos to accelerate progress on pending projects in honour of the significant events to be celebrated in the respective countries during 2015.

President Sang made the statement during a reception for Lao Deputy Prime Minister Somsavad Lengsavath in Hanoi on January 22, during which he praised the cooperation achievements of the two nations in recent years.

He also underscored that the two sides need to coordinate their mechanisms and policies to further economic, trade, and investment initiatives, adding bilateral collaboration in education and training should focus on improving Laos’ human workforce capacity.

For his part, the Lao Deputy PM highlighted progress achieved in trade between the two nations in 2014, which increased 34 percent from 2013 to 1.4 billion USD.

He briefed his host on the results of the 37 th conference of the Vietnam-Laos Inter-Government Committee, held in Hanoi on January 21. He said that after the event, the two sides assessed the status of their current cooperation efforts and identified the roots of existing barriers to be promptly addressed.-VNA