A seminar was held in Paris on September 17 to further develop trade and industrial cooperation between Vietnamese and French businesses and localities.

As part of the L’Humanite Newspaper Festival 2011, the Vietnam-France Economic Seminar was initiated by the Communist Party of Vietnam and the French Communist Party.

Participants at the event agreed that France is now one of Vietnam ’s leading partners in Europe but the Vietnam-France economic cooperation remains modest compared to the two countries’ potential and demand.

According to Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Hai Nam , two-way trade between Vietnam and France enjoyed an average annual growth of 13 percent, increasing from 709 million EUR in 2000 to more than 2 billion EUR in 2010.

The figure is forecast to reach 2.4 billion EUR in 2011, up 20 percent over last year, he added.

The participants also discussed effective measures to tap the two countries’ potential and minimise the global economic crisis’s negative impacts on their economies as well as bilateral economic, trade and investment cooperation./.