Swiss President Doris Leuthard and her visiting Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Minh Triet held talks in Bern May 18 about measures to further foster trade, investment ties and official development assistance (ODA) provision.
The Southeast Asian nation is full of economic potentials and an attractive tourism destination, President Doris told her guest, the Vietnamese government said.
The two-way trade rose five folds over the past ten years to US$2.6 billion in 2009 while Switzerland’s FDI in Vietnam hit US$1.43 billion last year, ranking the fourth among EU nations.
President Doris highly spoke of Vietnam’s move to make a feasibility study on establishing a free trade area (FTA) with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which groups Switzerland, Norway, Liechstenstein and Iceland.
Triet, who earlier attended a Vietnam-Switzerland business forum while calling at Zurich city May 17, and the host agreed to give more favorable conditions to Swiss and Vietnamese investors to penetrate into the other market.
Switzerland will continue providing ODA for Vietnam, Doris said, adding that the future ODA provision will focus on the fields of economic cooperation and partnership, poverty reduction and environmental cooperation.
She agreed to boost the bilateral cooperation in developing private-public partnerships (PPP).
Triet took the occasion to invite his Swiss counterpart to visit Vietnam.
Vietnam as the chair of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) welcomes Switzerland to accredit an ambassador to ASEAN and will support the European nation to strengthen relations with the bloc, Triet was quoted as saying.
They later issued a joint statement and witnessed the signing of an agreement that allows relatives of representative agencies’ officers of both sides to hold income jobs in each country and a memorandum of understanding on education and training cooperation.
The Vietnamese leader will wrap up his four-day tour to Switzerland today and leave for Finland. (
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