President welcomes Queen of Netherlands

Hanoi (VNA) – President Tran Dai Quang hosted a reception in Hanoi on May 31 for Queen of the Netherlands Máxima Zorreguieta Cerruti, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, who is on a working visit to Vietnam.

President Quang said he was delighted to see relations between Vietnam and the UN in general and the Netherlands in particular have developed positively in many fields.

The Strategic Partnership on Climate Change Adaptation and Water Management (2010) and the Strategic Partnership on Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security (2014) are vivid evidence of the current fruitful relationship between Vietnam and the Netherlands, he elaborated.

The President said political meetings between senior leaders of the two nations in the recent past have laid a foundation for the bilateral comprehensive cooperation, noting with pleasure that the Netherlands is now the biggest European investor and is one of the most important trade partners of Vietnam.

President Quang took this occasion to thank Queen Máxima for her interest in microfinance in Vietnam through her visit to the country in 2011. He spoke highly of the Queen’s efforts to enhance inclusive finance for developing nations as well as her ongoing visit to study and share experience in promoting inclusive finance as Vietnam has just embarked on this sphere.

Thanks to the implementation of policies and activities related to inclusive finance such as microfinance development, credit for agriculture and rural areas, and social security, Vietnam has reaped a wide range of achievements in socio-economic development and poverty reduction that have been recognised by the international community, he noted.

The State leader believed that inclusive finance will be a useful tool to effectively mobilise resources, contributing to Vietnam’s socio-economic development and sustainable growth. In early 2017, the Government assigned the State Bank of Vietnam to build and promulgate a national inclusive finance strategy in 2020.

In this spirit, President Quang suggested Queen Máxima, in her capacity as a representative of the Netherlands and the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, mobilise financial and technical resources from the UN and other international organisations to assist Vietnam in building the strategy and share experience with the country.

Queen Máxima congratulated Vietnam on its achievements in hunger elimination, poverty reduction and socio-economic development over the past 30 years as well as its outcomes in deploying inclusive finance.

She said inclusive finance will be a tool to effectively mobilise resources, contributing to Vietnam’s socio-economic development and sustainable growth and helping people get easier access to official finance and banking services.

The Queen also affirmed that the Netherlands is willing to share experience and cooperate with Vietnam in the field of inclusive finance.-VNA