PM begins third leg of ASEAN tour

Singapores Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (L) and PM Nguyen Tan Dung (R)

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung leaves for Singapore today on the third leg of his tour of five ASEAN countries - Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar and Brunei.

The two-day official visit, at the invitation of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, is PM Dung’s first since being re-elected Prime Minister and is designed to re-affirm Viet Nam’s commitment to boosting co-operation with its Asian neighbours.

The PM will hold talks with his Singaporean counterpart, as well as President SR Nathan, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. Dung will also visit the Surbana Corporation and the Singapore Townships.

The visit comes as relations between the two countries enter a golden era - heralded by the signing in March 2004 of a joint declaration on comprehensive co-operation for the 21st Century.

Singapore, which established formal diplomatic relations with Viet Nam in August 1973, was one of the first four ASEAN nations to explore Viet Nam’s investment environment in the 1990s. Since then, the city-state’s investment has grown rapidly.

According to statistics from Viet Nam’s Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Foreign Investment Department, by the end of July 2007 Singapore had 503 projects totalling US$9.6 billion licensed in Viet Nam, ranking it top in ASEAN and second among 79 countries and territories investing in Viet Nam.

Singaporean investors are involved in businesses ranging from oil and gas exploration and exploitation and industrial production to agro-forestry, fisheries and services.

Two-way trade between Viet Nam and Singapore has risen markedly over the last decade from $3.3 billion in 1998 to $7.7 billion in 2006.

The Viet Nam-Singapore Co-operation Committee was established in 1993 and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on boosting co-operation between the two countries’ stock exchanges. It was noteworthy that the Singapore Exchange Ltd and the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (previously known as the HCM City Securities Trading Centre) recently signed an agreement to allow cross-exchange listings.

Singapore has also been assisting Viet Nam through the "ASEAN Integration" initiative, while its Education Ministry has pledged to increase the number of scholarships doled out to outstanding Vietnamese students.

Since its inception in 2002, Ha Noi’s Viet Nam-Singapore Training Centre has provided training to more than 2,500 Vietnamese students.

(Source: VNS)