The Vietnam News Agency (VNA) and the Public Relations Department of Thailand (PRD) on August 6 agreed to tighten their relations after a decade of professional cooperation between the two sides.

The agreement was achieved at the 10th Joint Technical Committee Meeting (JTC) in the capital of Thailand co-chaired by VNA's Deputy Director General Le Duy Truyen and PRD Deputy Director General Ampawan Charoenkul.

The two sides reviewed the results of the implementation of their Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Information and News Exchange and discussed measures to improve their cooperation in the new situation, especially while Vietnam and Thailand are preparing to lift their ties to a strategic partnership.

Over the past year, VNA sent 350 English news items to PRD, which mainly covered Vietnam's political and socio-economic issues. On its part, VNA receiced around 620 news items from PRD. The two sides also exchanged video news with two items from each side on a daily basis.

The cooperation between VNA and PRD has been unceasingly developed over the past decade in line with the fine relationship between Vietnam and Thailand as well as with the development of modern media, VNA Deputy Director General Truyen said.

On her part, the PRD Deputy Director General said the existing cooperation and new commitments reached at this meeting will further boost the relations between PRD and VNA, helping both agencies fulfil their task of promoting mutual understanding between the two countries’ people.

VNA and PRD signed an MoU on cooperation in information and news exchange on August 24, 2003. Since then, high-level officials from both sides have maintained annual meetings to review the implementation of the MoU and explore new possibilities to expand their cooperation.

The comprehensive cooperation between the two agencies covers a wide range of activities from exchanging high-level delegations, news teams, text information, media content through the Internet, video clips and footages, to training and sharing professional experiences. The cooperation has also contributed to improving the friendship and understanding between people of the two countries.-VNA