Prime Minister meets Philippine President in Cambodia
Phnom Penh (VNA) – Prime Minister
Pham Minh Chinh met President of the Philippines Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos on November 10 on the
occasion of they both attending the 40th and 41st ASEAN Summits in Phnom
Penh, Cambodia.
PM Chinh congratulated the Philippine Government
and people on their achievements over the past years, especially in controlling
COVID-19 and maintaining high economic growth.
President Marcos expressed his belief that Vietnam will
score greater successes in renewal process and global integration. He also
welcomed the upcoming Philippine visit by Vietnamese National Assembly (NA) Chairman Vuong Dinh
Hue.
The two leaders expressed their satisfaction
about the growing bilateral strategic partnership despite COVID-19 and spoke
highly of the effective maintenance of high-level exchanges and meetings. Two-way
trade hit an all-time high of 6.8 billion USD last year and nearly 5.4 billion USD in the first eight months of this year.
Sharing the view that there remains ample room to further deepen the bilateral strategic partnership, both sides agreed to promote all-level
visits. PM Chinh suggested that the two sides coordinate to make the best preparation for the upcoming
Philippine visit by NA Chairman Hue.
He proposed the two countries enhance trade,
including in rice, while considering the removal of unnecessary barriers to create
better investment environment for each other's companies. He also took the occasion to ask the
Philippines to continue offering support to the Vietnamese community to live
and do business there.
Agreeing with PM Chinh’s proposals, President
Marcos urged both sides to foster economic-trade-investment, national
defence-security cooperation, especially maritime, education-training, labour,
culture, tourism, locality-to-locality and people-to-people links. He called
for attention to sharing experience in energy security, climate change
response, digital transformation, hi-tech and offering mutual support to fight
national disasters and epidemics.
On global and regional issues of shared
concern, the two leaders agreed that Vietnam and the Philippines need to
strengthen consultation and support each other at regional and global
organisations, especially at ASEAN and the United Nations.
They vowed to support each other and maintain
the unity and centrality of ASEAN.
Regarding the East Sea issue, they pledged to
uphold the principles of settling disputes by peaceful means in accordance with
international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of
the Sea (UNCLOS 1982).
On the occasion, President Marcos invited PM
Chinh to pay an official visit to the Philippines soon at a time convenient for both sides./.