Ambassador Nguyen Minh Vu: Vietnam and Cambodia are strong together, developing together, moving forward steadily.

On the occasion of the 58th anniversary of the establishment of Vietnam-Cambodia diplomatic relations (June 24, 1967 - June 24, 2025), Vietnamese Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia Nguyen Minh Vu gave an interview to the Cambodian National News Agency (AKP), emphasizing the message: The solidarity between the two countries is a valuable asset that needs to be preserved and developed for future generations.

Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni (right) receives Vietnamese Ambassador Nguyen Minh Vu at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh in February 2025. (Source: VNA)

In an interview with the Cambodia News Agency, Ambassador Nguyen Minh Vu affirmed that the relationship of “good neighborliness, traditional friendship, comprehensive cooperation, and long-term sustainability” between Vietnam and Cambodia has been cultivated by generations of leaders and people of the two countries and is increasingly consolidated and developed.

In particular, economic , trade and investment cooperation has always been an important area of ​​cooperation between the two countries. In particular, the two countries' senior leaders have identified this as a key area of ​​cooperation from now until 2030.

Ambassador Nguyen Minh Vu said that since the signing of the Cambodia-Vietnam Economic and Trade Cooperation Agreement, trade and investment relations between the two countries have developed remarkably, playing an important role in promoting the socio-economic development of each country; at the same time, creating favorable conditions for strengthening and expanding comprehensive cooperation in all fields between the two sides.

Regarding bilateral trade, if at the time the Cambodia-Vietnam Trade Agreement was signed in 1998, trade between the two countries only reached 117 million USD, by 2024 this figure had increased to 10.1 billion USD. In the first 5 months of this year, two-way trade turnover reached approximately 5.5 billion USD, an increase of 19% over the same period last year. It is expected that in 2025, bilateral trade turnover will exceed 12 billion USD.

According to Ambassador Nguyen Minh Vu, Vietnam is currently Cambodia's third largest international trade partner, after China and the US, but is Cambodia's second largest export market, after the US. Vietnam is the leading market importing most of Cambodia's key agricultural products such as rice, cashew nuts, cassava, rubber, etc.

In the interview, the Vietnamese Ambassador to Cambodia reviewed a number of bilateral trade promotion agreements signed between the two countries, such as the Border Trade Agreement, the Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, the Annual Bilateral Trade Promotion Agreement, and the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Border Trade Infrastructure Cooperation.

“With the growing economic scale of the two countries, the increasing and complementary demand for exchanging goods and services between the two countries, plus the good friendship and dynamic business communities of the two countries, I believe that the two countries will achieve the goal of increasing bilateral trade turnover to 20 billion USD in the next few years,” the Ambassador commented.

Regarding the investment sector, Ambassador Nguyen Minh Vu said that up to now, Vietnam has 215 investment projects in Cambodia with a total registered capital of 2.94 billion USD, making it one of the four foreign countries with the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) in the land of pagodas.

Vietnamese investors are currently present in 18 out of 25 provincial administrative units of Cambodia, focusing on key areas such as agriculture , telecommunications, banking, financial services, processing industry, food processing, mining, aviation, tourism...

Among these, many projects have been put into stable and effective operation, contributing to many aspects of Cambodia's socio-economy, promoting infrastructure development, creating jobs, contributing to increasing income for a large number of local workers, as well as contributing to social security and humanitarian charity work in Cambodia.

Ambassador Nguyen Minh Vu noted that in order to promote Vietnam's investment in Cambodia in the coming time, the two countries need to regularly organize promotional events to promote bilateral trade and investment cooperation such as Business Forums, Cambodia-Vietnam Investment Promotion Conferences, tourism exhibitions, the establishment of border economic zones... to promote investment cooperation between the two countries to become increasingly in-depth and highly effective. A typical example is the Business Dialogue event jointly organized by the Vietnamese Embassy in Cambodia and the Vietnam-Cambodia Business Association (VCBA) in early April. The dialogue forum gathered more than 150 Vietnamese enterprises, all of which are interested in investing in the Cambodian market.

From that perspective, the Vietnamese Ambassador expressed his belief that the good political and diplomatic relations between the two countries, the close geographical and cultural locations, and the recent improvement in the investment environment of the two countries will create very favorable conditions for businesses of the two countries to invest, do business and develop, bringing practical benefits to businesses and people of the two countries.

According to Ambassador Nguyen Minh Vu, on the basis of 58 years of relations between the two countries and in the context of the increasingly complex and unpredictable regional and world situation, as well as the fact that "peace, stability and development of one country is also peace, stability and development of the other", the solidarity between the two countries of Vietnam and Cambodia is a valuable asset that needs to be preserved and developed for future generations.

With that spirit, Ambassador Nguyen Minh Vu emphasized: "With two countries that are strong, develop together and are united in friendship, we can certainly move forward in the challenging context of the current world situation."

Source: https://baoquocte.vn/dai-su-nguyen-minh-vu-hai-nuoc-viet-nam-cambodia-cung-manh-cung-phat-trien-vung-buoc-tien-len-318953.html