Vietnam important trade partner of Argentina: Vice President

Vice President of Argentina Gabriela Michetti meets with Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai - Photo: VNA

Michetti, who is also President of the Argentine Senate, stressed that Argentina is keen on developing cooperation with Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, and recognised the remarkable progresses in bilateral relations in recent years.

She proposed Vietnam create opportunities for businesses to cooperate in the fields of their strengths, including garment-textile, agriculture, culture, and people-to-people exchanges.

For his part, Deputy Minister Hai briefed the outcomes of the mid-term session of the Vietnam-Argentina intergovernmental committee, which took place in Buenos Aires on October 25-26, and affirmed that this mechanism has helped promote bilateral cooperation not only in economics, trade and investment but also in agriculture, science and technology.

He urged the two sides to strengthen coordination to increase bilateral trade to US$ 3.5 billion in 2017 as well as speed up the roadmap to open markets for farm produce in 2017-2018 which includes facilitating procedures for Vietnamese fruits such as lychees, dragon fruits, longans and mangoes and Argentine fruits such as oranges, blueberries, pears, apples and cherries.

The official also suggested increasing delegation exchanges and hosting trade and investment promotion activities to help firms explore business environment in the respective countries.

Vietnam will serve as a gateway for Argentina to export goods to the Southeast Asian market while Argentina will help Vietnam penetrate into the Latin American market, he affirmed.

He proposed Argentina - a founding member of the South America’s Fractious Trade Bloc (Mercosur) accelerate the negotiation process and signing of a preferential trade agreement between this bloc and Vietnam.

Earlier on October 25-26, Deputy Minister Hai and Secretary for International Economic Relations of the Argentine Foreign Ministry Horacio Reyser co-chaired a meeting of the Vietnam-Argentina inter-governmental committee.

Reyser said Vietnam is not only a priority market in the strategy of diversifying and expanding exports of Argentina but also one of the most important trade partners in Asia and the third biggest importer of Argentina.

Deputy Minister Hai cited two-way trade surpassed US$3 billion in 2016, showing a year-on-year rise of 16.7 percent. In the first nine months of 2017, bilateral trade reached nearly US$2.4 billion, up 15 percent against the same period last year.

Vietnam mainly exported footwear, garment-textile, rubber, electronic spare parts, and plastic products while importing soybeans, soybean oil, maze, wheat, cattle-feed, and pharmaceutical products from the market.

The two sides pledged to speed up the exchanges of views on food security and animal and plant quarantine. Argentina wants to export cherries to Vietnam while Vietnam looks to ship lychees to the South American country.

During his visit to Argentina, Deputy Minister Hai also had a working session with Argentina’s Deputy Minister of Production Miguel Braun.