The General Secretary and his wife are about to visit the UK.

At the invitation of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Keir Starmer, General Secretary To Lam and his wife, along with a high-ranking Vietnamese delegation, will pay an official visit to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from October 28-30.

This is General Secretary To Lam's first visit to the UK. The visit takes place in the context of the two countries celebrating 50 years of diplomatic relations.

Vietnam and the UK established diplomatic relations on September 11, 1973. The two countries signed a Joint Statement on the establishment of a Strategic Partnership in September 2010. On September 30, 2020, the two sides issued a new Joint Statement on the Strategic Partnership with seven priority areas of cooperation and affirmed that the two sides aim to elevate the relationship to a higher level in the next 10 years.

During a reception for British Ambassador Iain Frew on October 17, General Secretary To Lam affirmed that bilateral relations have developed substantially and effectively in all areas, commensurate with the level of the strategic partnership.

The relationship between the two countries still has a lot of potential for development, especially in the fields of defense - security, finance - currency, education - training, science - technology, labor, energy conversion, climate change response, especially culture, sports and people-to-people exchange, which has paved the way for cooperation in other fields.

General Secretary To Lam received British Ambassador to Vietnam Iain Frew on October 17. Photo: VNA

The General Secretary said that Vietnam always attaches importance to and pays special attention to further strengthening and bringing the Strategic Partnership with the UK to a new stage of development.

The UK is an important trading partner of Vietnam in Europe and is the 15th largest investor out of 152 countries and territories investing in Vietnam. Vietnam is the UK's second largest trading partner in ASEAN.

Bilateral trade turnover in 2024 will reach 8.424 billion USD, up 18% compared to 2023. Of which, Vietnam will export 7.543 billion USD, up 18.9% compared to 2023; imports will reach 881.050 million USD, up 10.8%.

Trade turnover in the first 8 months of this year reached 6.1 billion USD (up 9.3% over the same period in 2024), of which exports reached 5.4 billion USD (up 8.2%), imports reached 630.9 million USD (up 19.8%). Trade between Vietnam and the UK reached an all-time high.

The UK is one of the leading donors to Vietnam (50 million pounds/year for the period 2006-2010). This country promotes cooperation activities with Vietnam through cooperation funds in the UK ASEAN region such as the Prosperity Fund, Newton Fund...

In education and training, the UK focuses on developing cooperation with the presence of the British Council in Hanoi, Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City; actively promoting the participation of leading UK schools in training links and cooperation in developing higher education institutions in Vietnam.

This country is one of the partners with the most regular and active cooperation activities with Vietnam in the fields of environment, climate change and implementation of the results at the COP26 conference.

At the March 2022 meeting in Germany, G7 ministers decided to adopt the UK's proposal to support a G7-Vietnam Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP).

Cooperation between the two countries in the semiconductor field has a lot of room and brings great potential.

The Vietnamese community in the UK has about 110,000 people, including 12,000 students and postgraduates.

Leaders of many countries congratulate Vietnam on receiving 15.5 billion USD in support for green transformation . The JETP agreement supports Vietnam with 15.5 billion USD to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/tong-bi-thu-va-phu-nhan-sap-tham-anh-2456519.html