President's upcoming visit to affirm continuity of Vietnam-Cuba solidarity: Ambassador

Hanoi (VNA) – President Nguyen Xuan Phuc's upcoming official visit to Cuba will affirm the continuity of fraternal solidarity, comprehensive cooperation and mutual absolute trust between the two Parties, States and people over the past more than six decades, said Vietnamese Ambassador to Cuba Le Thanh Tung.

Speaking to the Vietnam News Agency (VNA)'s correspondent in Havana, Tung stressed that the visit, scheduled to take place from September 18-20, will be the first high-level visit between the two countries since the 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam and the 8th National Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba.

This will be the first time that Cuba welcomes a foreign head of state since COVID-19 broke out in the country in early 2020, he noted, stressing that this manifests the special solidarity between Vietnam and Cuba.

The diplomat held that the close ties between the two countries have been shown during the fight against COVID-19 pandemic. Right since the beginning of the outbreak in 2020, Vietnam and Cuba have offered gifts and relief aid to each other, he noted.

Right after gaining initial positive results in COVID-19 vaccine research, Cuba showed its willingness to cooperate with and support Vietnam in the pandemic combat in specific aspects such as vaccine provision, technology transfer and collaboration in research, production and use of vaccines for children as well as manufacturing COVID-19 treatment medicine.

Regarding bilateral economic ties the area that has received great attention from Party and State leaders of both nations, Tung said that during President Phuc’s visit, the two sides are expected to sign a joint Plan of Action to implement the bilateral economic cooperation agenda in the 2021-2025 period, which covers cooperation in more than 10 fields from trade, investment, energy, and tourism infrastructure to science - technology, and health care as well as other fields, along with many agreements in economy, trade and investment.

Vietnam has been the second biggest trade partner and the largest investor of Cuba in the Asia-Oceania region.

The ambassador expressed his belief that during the visit, more Vietnamese enterprises will pour investments in Cuba to optimise the strength of each country and the supplements of the two economies, especially in energy, construction materials and consumer goods production, and tourism infrastructure./.