The eighth Vietnam-UK Strategic Dialogue was held in Hanoi on March 28.
The Vietnam News Agency announced the above on the same day and said that Deputy Foreign Minister Pham Quang Hieu and Secretary of State in charge of Asia-Pacific Amanda Milling co-chaired the dialogue.
The content of the dialogue as well as the statements of the representatives of the two sides were not specified by the state-controlled media.
However, in an article published on mattran.org.vn at the end of February 2022 analyzing the strategic partnership between Vietnam and the UK, since the establishment of the strategic partnership in 2010 until now, Vietnam – UK cooperation in both bilateral and multilateral aspects has made many positive steps in various fields.
Specifically, the UK has supported Vietnam’s candidacy for the position of a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2020-2021 term. Vietnam plays an important role in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) granting the UK the status of a dialogue partner as well as in the UK’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
Especially in 2021, according to statistics from Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade, despite being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the two countries’ bilateral trade as of May 11, 2021, reached more than $6 billion, an increase of 17% over the same period in 2020.
The total value of Vietnam’s exports to the UK is $5.24 billion and imports from the UK are $778 million. The UK is currently Vietnam’s third-largest trading partner in Europe and Vietnam’s ninth-largest export market in the world.
Vietnam ranks 38/241 trade partners of the UK, second in ASEAN (after Thailand) in terms of export turnover to the UK.
The UK currently has 400 valid projects in Vietnam, with a total registered capital of $3.6 billion, ranking 16th out of 137 countries and territories having investment projects in Vietnam. In contrast, Vietnam currently has 9 projects with a total registered capital of $11.5 million in the UK.
In addition, the two countries also have many cooperation projects in the fields of oil and gas, renewable energy, and energy-saving that are being implemented.
On August 3, 2021, the British Government sponsored Vietnam for the first 415,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine out of a total of 100 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine produced in the UK, helping Vietnam quickly respond to the vaccination coverage with the aim of preventing the spread of the pandemic.
Translated by Thoibao.de from RFA: https://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/news/vietnamnews/eighth-vietnam-uk-strategic-dialogue-takes-place-in-hanoi-03282022080333.html
