The time-honoured friendship, special solidarity, and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Laos provided strong support for each country’s construction and defence process in 2014, Vietnamese Ambassador to Laos Nguyen Manh Hung has said.

According to the diplomat, in the past year, the two countries fostered their ties across the board through various channels and at all levels, prominently through the Party, State, National Assembly, Government, and mass organisations.

Concerted efforts were made by both sides since the beginning of the year to realise their high-level cooperative agreements and the process was thoroughly supervised till the yearend, Hung stressed.

In the year, a large number of visits, mostly at the high-ranking level, were exchanged, focusing on the sharing of experience in Party building and macro-economic management as well as in tackling socio-economic development issues.

Vietnam maintained as one of the three biggest investors in Laos in 2014, having over 400 projects capitalising nearly 5.1 billion USD, Hung said.

Two-way trade recorded a year-on-year rise of 14 percent surpassing 1.4 billion USD for the time, providing a springboard for the two countries to raise the figure to 2 billion USD by the end of this year.

According to the official, personnel education and training remained a priority in the two countries’ relations with Vietnam granting 700 scholarships to Lao students.

This year, the Vietnam-Laos special friendship and comprehensive cooperation will develop further, the diplomat affirmed.-VNA