Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh meets with Governor General of Australia

The Prime Minister welcomed Governor-General David Hurley's first State visit to Vietnam, which was also the first visit to Vietnam by an Australian leader after more than four years of interruption due to the Covid-19 pandemic; emphasizing that the visit is of great significance in the context of the two countries actively celebrating the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations (1973 - 2023).

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh congratulated Australia on its impressive results in economic recovery and development after the Covid-19 pandemic, actively improving social security for its people, and implementing many important international commitments, including responding to climate change .

The Governor-General of Australia expressed his pleasure to visit Vietnam again, reiterated his good feelings towards the country and people of Vietnam; highly appreciated Vietnam's great achievements in preventing and fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, recovering and developing the economy, production, improving people's lives; especially achieving a GDP growth rate of over 8% in 2022, the highest in the past 10 years.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh agreed that the Vietnam-Australia Strategic Partnership has seen many strong developments, in which economic and trade cooperation between the two countries is a bright spot, with two-way trade turnover in 2022 reaching nearly 15.7 billion USD, up nearly 27% compared to 2021, making Australia the 7th largest trading partner of Vietnam and Vietnam the 10th largest trading partner of Australia. The Prime Minister asked Australia to create more favorable conditions for Vietnamese agricultural and aquatic products to access the Australian market to balance the bilateral trade balance.

The Prime Minister affirmed that Vietnam welcomes large Australian enterprises and investment funds to invest in Vietnam in areas such as renewable energy, infrastructure, telecommunications, finance - banking, education, high-tech agriculture, digital transformation , mining, agriculture, aviation, tourism...; At the same time, he proposed that Australia create favorable conditions for Vietnamese enterprises to invest in the fields of mining, agriculture, aviation, tourism... Regarding security and defense cooperation, the Prime Minister proposed that Australia continue to support Vietnam in training, improving capacity and English, cooperating in preventing and combating transnational crimes, counter-terrorism, economic crimes, drugs, high technology; cooperating in cyber security...

Governor-General David Hurley appreciated the proposals of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh; emphasized that the two countries are two highly complementary economies and Australia is in the process of expanding and diversifying its trade partners, with countries in the region being a priority. The Governor-General said that the two sides also need to promote cooperation in other areas such as education, tourism, agriculture, people-to-people exchange, etc.; emphasized the advantage of the fact that airlines of the two countries have resumed direct flights with a frequency of 17 flights/week in promoting and developing tourism; agreed to exchange experiences in tourism development, especially with some tourism products that are Australia's strengths such as community tourism, green tourism, educational tourism, and health tourism.

The Governor-General of Australia highly appreciated the recent establishment of the Vietnam-Australia Center at the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics by both sides, as well as Vietnam's facilitation of RMIT University to expand its operations in Vietnam. Discussing new areas of cooperation such as climate change response, energy transition, etc., the Governor-General affirmed that Australia will support Vietnam in achieving its goal of reducing net emissions to "zero" by 2050; and coordinate with Vietnam and Laos to organize the ASEAN-Australia High-Level Dialogue Forum on Climate Change and Energy Transition.

Discussing regional and international cooperation, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Governor-General David Hurley appreciated the two countries' close coordination and mutual support at regional and international forums, especially at the United Nations, APEC, and ASEAN; and were pleased with the developments in the Australia-ASEAN relationship with the upgrade to Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (October 2021) as well as the plan to hold a Special Summit to celebrate 50 years of ASEAN-Australia relations in 2024.

Governor-General David Hurley affirmed that Australia supports ASEAN's stance on the East Sea issue; agreed that all parties need to make efforts to maintain peace, stability, security, safety, freedom of navigation and aviation in the East Sea; respect international law, especially the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea; seriously implement the DOC and build an effective and efficient COC in accordance with international law.

The Governor-General of Australia expressed his wish to meet Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh again soon on the occasion of his official visit to Australia. On this occasion, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh extended an invitation to the Australian Prime Minister to pay an official visit to Vietnam at a convenient time in 2023.

VNA

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