President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Ladies and gentlemen,
We had substantive talks with our Vietnamese friends. As in previous years, the talks were very comprehensive, but at the same time, very warm and friendly. They confirmed that the strategic partnership between Russia and Vietnam is developing quite successfully.
We also reviewed or trade and economic cooperation. We discussed cooperating in politics and on the international arena. In this regard, I would like to emphasise that Vietnam is certainly one of the leaders of the rapidly developing Asia-Pacific region while, as you know, Russia is and will continue building up its relations with that region. This will certainly promote the development of Russia’s own economy, including the Asian part of the country in the Far East.
I should note that in 2011 our bilateral trade increased by more than 25 percent to over three billion dollars, and in the first five months of this year, it grew by 54.5 percent.
Today, we signed the Joint Action Plan and Memorandum on exchanging strategic data between our national customs services. We hope that this will also promote our trade and economic ties.
We have a long, successful history of cooperating in energy. The Vietsovpetro joint venture has been in operation since 1981, and our cooperation in this field is constantly expanding. The company is exploiting new deposits on Vietnam’s continental shelf. Just recently, Zarubezhneft, the Russian shareholder of Vietsovpetro, was officially announced the winner of the tender for developing another gas block offshore south of Vietnam.
Our joint ventures do not only operate in Vietnam but in Russia as well, in its Far North and in the Southern Urals.
Vietnam’s first nuclear power station will be constructed with Russian involvement. Naturally, we will employ the most advanced technologies to build this very important, massive facility. The Government of Russia is offering loans to support our cooperation with Vietnam and the aggregate lending facilities have reached some 10 billion dollars.
We have agreed to continue expanding opportunities for cooperation and joint work in the future, including through the use of modern instruments of economic support, such as state guarantees. We will attract international and Russian financial institutions more actively.
We expect that in implementing all our plans and in using new instruments of cooperation, we will soon be able to increase our trade three- or four-fold.
We also plan to cooperate in the humanitarian sector.
Vietnam is one of the foreign nations with the most specialists educated in Russia’s universities. We have trained 52,000 Vietnamese specialists. Today, there are over 6,000 students from Vietnam studying at our universities, including 1,700 under government support programmes. Given Vietnam’s expanding demand for professionals, we are prepared to consider a broadening cooperation programme in this area.
The project to launch a Vietnamese-Russian technology university in Hanoi will also become highly promising.
Besides, Vietnam is a growingly popular destination for Russian tourists. Last year, nearly 88,000 Russians vacationed there, and it has already hosted 87,000 tourists from our country in the first five months of this year. Vietnam is among our fastest-growing tourist destinations.
We will also advance in other areas of humanitarian cooperation. We expect that the Cooperation Programme between our culture ministries, which was signed today, will promote this.
Vietnam is our traditional strategic partner and reliable friend. Today, it is an actively-developing nation with a population of 90 million. And our meeting today with the President of Vietnam, with our Vietnamese friends, shows that our bilateral cooperation is gaining momentum.
I would like to thank all our Vietnamese friends for today’s joint work. Thank you.
President of Vietnam Truong Tan Sang (retranslated): Friends,
I am very happy to visit the great Russia, to meet with our kind, generous and welcoming Russian friends.
I would like to thank President Putin, my trusted colleague and a close friend of the Vietnamese people, as well as all our Russian friends, for the warm and cordial welcome that was shown to me and the Vietnamese delegation.
President Putin and I just had very fruitful and successful talks in a very trusting, sincere atmosphere, which is typical of the traditional relations of friendship and cooperation between Vietnam and Russia.
We have briefed one another on the course of events in both nations, exchanged views on the current state and prospects of our bilateral relations, and coordinated measures for the continued development of all-around strategic partnership between Vietnam and the Russian Federation.
We shared assessments on matters of mutual interest in international and regional affairs. I am also very happy to inform you that both sides hold very close, concurrent positions on these matters.
We confirmed the desire and determination of the two governments and peoples to take relations between Vietnam and Russia to the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership. We agreed to further intensify the trust-based dialogue between our nations, thereby giving momentum to cooperation in other areas, particularly in investments, trade economy.
Strengthening and developing relations of traditional friendship and all-around strategic partnership with the Russian Federation is one of the top priorities in Vietnam’s foreign policy. For our part, we welcome and greatly value the Russian Federation’s course of further advancing relations of strategic partnership with Vietnam, as was reflected in the Executive Order On Measures for Implementing the Russian Federation’s Foreign Policy.
The two sides highly value the results of developing the strategic partnership between Vietnam and Russia in the last decade, of which President Putin was a promoter.
Political relations between our countries have developed tightly. Now, the two sides are implementing many strategic projects, including a project to construct Vietnam’s first nuclear power plant, as Mr President already mentioned. This project promises to become a new symbol of Vietnamese-Russian relations in the 21st century.
We have coordinated the main areas of development for our bilateral relations for the next decades, namely our cooperation in oil and gas deposits exploration, energy, our military technical cooperation. We will also broaden cooperation in science and technologies, education, personnel training, culture and tourism.
In addition, Vietnam and the Russian Federation confirmed their intention to follow the traditions of close cooperation and supporting one another on the international arena. This promotes the protection of both our nations’ interests, creating a more fair and democratic world order, and will serve to promote peace, security, cooperation and development in our region and throughout the world.
As you have already seen, President Putin and I just witnessed the signing of many agreements on cooperation between our two countries in customs, agriculture, and culture. This allows us to further improve the legal foundations of bilateral cooperation between Vietnam and Russia for the near future.
I would like to take this opportunity to confirm that the Vietnamese-Russian friendship, which has been built through the efforts of many generations and which has overcome many tests of time, is an invaluable source of wealth that the two nations’ leaders and peoples continue to preserve.
I am certain that given our leaders’ decisiveness and attention toward developing relations between our two countries, as well as the efforts of various ministries and agencies and the two peoples, the relations of a comprehensive strategic partnership between Vietnam and Russia will keep advancing fruitfully and will serve the interests and aspirations of our peoples.
I will use this occasion to ask Russian media to convey our sincere feelings of solidarity, friendship and gratitude to the Russian people.
Our relations will certainly contribute to the well-being of our peoples, as well as stability, cooperation and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region and the world.
Thank you very much.