At the invitation of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and his wife, Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru and his wife paid an official visit to Vietnam from April 27 to 29. This is Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru's first visit to Vietnam since taking office, and also the first visit after the two countries upgraded their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership in November 2023.
The visit took place in the context of the Vietnam-Japan Comprehensive Strategic Partnership entering its second year and achieving many new developments and comprehensive development in all fields.
With the tireless efforts of generations of leaders and people of the two countries over the past half century, the cooperative and friendly relationship between Vietnam and Japan has developed strongly, substantially, extensively and achieved many important achievements in many fields. Political trust has been constantly consolidated, as exchanges and delegations at high and all levels have taken place closely, and dialogue and cooperation mechanisms have been implemented substantially and effectively. This is an important basis for promoting Vietnam-Japan relations further development in the new situation.
Japan is currently one of Vietnam's leading economic partners. Japan is a country ODA funding and is the largest labor cooperation partner, the third largest investor, the fourth largest tourism and trade partner of Vietnam. The two countries have granted each other most-favored-nation tariffs since 1999. In 2024, the total bilateral import-export turnover will reach 46.2 billion USD, an increase of 2.7% compared to 2023.
In terms of investment, as of March 31, 2025, Japan had 5,557 valid projects with a total registered investment capital of 78.6 billion USD, ranking 3rd among countries and territories investing in Vietnam. In the first three months of 2025, Japan's total registered investment capital reached 1.13 billion USD, up 20.6% over the same period with 77 newly registered projects. Meanwhile, Vietnam had 126 valid investment projects in Japan with a total registered investment capital of 20.6 million USD.
Cooperation between the two countries in new areas such as digital transformation, green transformation, Artificial intelligence... is increasingly being promoted and many specific developments have been recorded. The two sides have agreed on a list of 14 projects with a total capital of about 20 billion USD to prioritize implementation in the field of green energy, of which some projects have been implemented such as the cooperation project to build power plants, liquefied gas in Thai Binh, Nghi Son (Thanh Hoa), biomass power plant in Yen Bai...
Education and training is one of the prominent areas of cooperation between the two countries. Vietnam is the first country in the world to officially introduce Japanese into secondary school teaching since 2003 and primary school since 2019.
Meanwhile, Japan is one of the largest aid countries for Vietnam's education and training sector through ODA programs. The two sides have signed many cooperation documents in this field. The number of Vietnamese students studying in Japan currently reaches more than 51,000. Japan has supported the upgrading of four Vietnamese universities to high-quality universities. The two sides are cooperating to build Vietnam-Japan University to train high-quality human resources for Vietnam in the fields of science, technology, management and services.
The two sides closely coordinate and support each other at multilateral forums such as the United Nations, APEC, ASEAN, etc. Japan highly appreciates Vietnam's efforts in streamlining and restructuring the apparatus and political system from the central to local levels, as well as socio-economic development goals to create a foundation to bring the country into a new era, an era of national development, towards successfully achieving the goal of becoming a developed country. high income developed country in 2045.
The official visit to Vietnam by Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru and his wife aims to continue to contribute to consolidating and deepening political trust, promoting bilateral cooperation in many areas such as politics-diplomacy, defense-security, economy, trade, investment, education-human resource training, agriculture, local cooperation, people-to-people exchange, etc., while strengthening specific and substantive cooperation in new and advanced science-technology fields such as innovation, digital transformation, green transformation, semiconductors. The visit will contribute to further developing Vietnam-Japan relations in an increasingly practical and effective direction.
The reception of the Japanese Prime Minister and his wife affirms Vietnam's consistent policy of always attaching importance to developing relations with partners in the region, including Japan; considering Japan as one of Vietnam's leading important partners in many aspects.
Wishing the official visit to Vietnam by Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru and his wife a great success, adding more motivation for the two countries to continue implementing the cooperation agreement reached and also fostering good political relations between the two countries' senior leaders.
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