Leading a trade delegation of 29 Flemish companies, Flanders Minister-President Jan Jambon (N-VA/ECR) began his visit to Vietnam on Tuesday with a meeting with Vietnamese Foreign Minister Bùi Thanh Son and the prime minister.
The visit aims to strengthen cooperation between Flanders and Vietnam but also to study possible business opportunities for Flanders, reports Belga. Jambon is set to meet several politicians, including Vietnamese Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính.
During his meeting with Bùi, Jambon said that Vietnam remained one of Flanders’ priority partners and raised the possibility of opening cooperation between the two countries to other areas such as transport or education, reports Vietnamese press agency Le Courrier du Vietnam.
“Vietnam is a country with an extremely fast-growing economy, but this rapid growth also presents the country with enormous challenges, challenges that Flanders can help to overcome,” said Jambon. He referred in particular to the fields of climate technologies, the circular economy and digitalisation, reports Belga.
For his part, Bùi said he wanted to deepen Belgian imports to Vietnam in relatively active areas, such as agriculture or shipping.
Indeed, since the signing in October 2018 of a strategic partnership in the agricultural sector, the latter has become one of the main areas of cooperation between Belgium and Vietnam. Similarly, maritime transport is a major area of this cooperation: the Belgian company Rent-a-Port’s investment in the port of Hai Phong is the largest Belgian investment in Vietnam, according to the Belgian Foreign Ministry.
Economic relations between the two countries have grown in recent decades, particularly since the implementation of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) in August 2020: exports and imports have increased by 43% and 194.3% respectively in 2022, making Vietnam Belgium’s second trading partner among ASEAN countries.
These excellent trade relations could make Belgium an ideal partner to represent Vietnam’s interests in the EU, with Bui asking Jambon to lobby for the European Commission’s “yellow card” against Vietnamese seafood products.
Indeed, as part of its fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which came into force in 2010, the Commission warned Vietnam in 2017 with a “yellow card” that it risked being listed as a non-cooperating country ‐ a major challenge in a country where the fishing sector accounts for 7% of gross national product (GNP) and nearly 4.5 million direct jobs.
In October, a fourth delegation from the European Commission will visit Vietnam to assess progress made in this area.
(Nina Chabot | Euractiv.com)
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