Vietnam courts best of British

How significant is Hung’s visit to the United Kingdom for the strategic partnership between Vietnam and the UK?

Hung’s visit to the UK is particularly important to step up relations between the two nations after Vietnam and the UK inked the UK-Vietnam Strategic Partnership last year.

The visit will help boost the two countries’ bilateral relationship, especially at a time when Vietnam desires to further integrate into the global economy. This will give the UK a strong partner in South-east Asia.

This visit is also a major event in terms of increasing the relations between the two countries in many fields including economics, trade, investment and education, as well as defence-security, environment and climate change.

What sectors will the two countries’ relations focus on in the future?

The UK and Vietnam are strategic partners under the Joint Declaration signed in September, 2010 between the Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem and the UK Foreign Secretary William Hague.

The strategic partnership provides a framework to develop the bilateral relationship in a comprehensive way, in particular for strengthening and deepening cooperation across these key areas such as political – diplomatic cooperation, global and regional issues, trade and investment, sustainable socio-economic development, education, training, science and technology, security and defence, and people-to-people links.  

What is your view on UK investment in Vietnam and the UK’s official development assistance (ODA) to Vietnam in future?

The UK’s strong commitment to supporting Vietnam’s development is well grounded on a 10-year Development Partnership Arrangement 2006-2016. Under this framework, in May this year, Minister of State for International Development Alan Duncan visited Vietnam to formalise our support with Vietnam’s government in the next five-year period of 2011-2016.

As Vietnam has now become an emerging, vibrant economy and has reached middle income country status, we are moving from a traditional development relationship to a much broader one, in the light of the high level strategic partnership signed between the two governments in September last year.

In addition to continuing to support Vietnam to achieve Millennium Development Goal targets successfully, particularly on primary education, HIV prevention, and rural sanitation, we will increase our focus on emerging issues for a middle income country status, including governance, wealth creation and climate change.

Also, we have been, and will be working hard to ensure that our support is sustainable and bring the best result to the poor in Vietnam.

What does Vietnam need to do to attract more investment from the UK?

Many big UK firms have already been in Vietnam and are discovering exciting opportunities in the country, not least because of its young and dynamic workforce and population of over 90 million. For instance, Prudential is the largest single foreign employer of Vietnamese.

However, for them [UK firms] to get more success in Vietnam, I think that British companies should be patient and have a long-term strategy and set up good business relationships in order to be well rewarded. We are quite optimistic about Vietnam’s economic development. The potential of Vietnam remain strong.  

But we want this to be a two-way relationship, and I hope that Vietnamese companies will also look to expand to the UK as a good investment destination.