Prague (VNA) – National AssemblyChairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan arrived in Prague on April 11 (local time) tostart an official visit to the Czech Republic at the invitation of President ofthe Senate of the Czech Parliament Milan Stech.
The four-day visit looks to strengthen thetraditional friendship and multi-faceted cooperation between Vietnam and theCzech Republic, including the collaboration between the Vietnamese NationalAssembly and the Czech legislative bodies.
Chairwoman Ngan later visited the VietnameseEmbassy in the host country.
The embassy coordinated with the Czech competentagencies to support the Vietnamese community to integrate into the hostsociety.
It also worked with the Vietnamese people associationin the country to organize numerous activities to increase their cultural andspiritual life, and strengthen solidarity and mutual assistance.
Chairwoman Ngan affirmed that the VietnameseParty, State and National Assembly always support and create the bestconditions for Vietnamese representative offices abroad to operate and servethe country’s building and development efforts.
Along with implementing citizen protection, theembassy needs to promote its role to introduce Vietnam’s foreign investmentattraction policies to the Czech Republic to increase two-way trade, she said.
She asked the embassy to make specific proposalsfor the revision of the Law on Vietnamese Representative Offices abroad.
The Czech Republic’s recognition ofVietnamese-Czech people as the 14th ethnic minority group is the valuable assetof the countries’ amity, she said, adding that the embassy is an active factorin the movement of teaching Vietnamese for expatriates.
Vietnam and the Czech Republic establisheddiplomatic ties in February 1950 and since then the two have implementedpolicies to develop cooperation across the fields.
The two sides have conducted regular delegationexchanges in recent years, while the collaborative ties between the twonations’ legislatures have been thriving.
The Czech Republic was the first EasternEuropean country to provide official development assistance (ODA) for Vietnam.From 2013, it did not include Vietnam in the list of ODA recipients due to theeconomic development in the Southeast Asian nation in recent years.
From 1999 to present, the Czech government hasprovided scholarships for Vietnamese students and postgraduates.
The two sides are under negotiations to sign anew cooperation agreement on education for the next period, while the bilaterallabour cooperation has resumed after many years of hiatus.
The bilateral economic, trade, and investmentrelations have been reinforced and furthered over the past few years. The CzechRepublic is running 34 valid investment projects in Vietnam with a totalcapital of 89.9 million USD, ranking 45th out of the 116 nations andterritories investing in Vietnam.
Close to 60,000 Vietnamese are living in theCzech Republic. In 2013, the Czech government recognized Vietnamese-Czechpeople as the 14th ethnic group.-VNA