Hanoi (VNA)– External affairs have played an important role in socio-economic development,investment attraction and international integration of localities, agreedparticipants at the 19th National Conference on External Affairs thattook place in Hanoi on August 12.

Chairman of the HanoiPeople’s Committee Nguyen Duc Chung said that over the past years, Hanoi haspromoted external economic relations through meetings between senior leaders ofthe city and leaders of large multinational groups and enterprises.

The city hasstrengthened its relations with cities in the world, while activelyimplementing bilateral and multilateral economic agreements, he noted.

Chung said that the yearof 2018 continues marking new achievements of the city’s external relation workto serve foreign investment promotion. The city has engaged in many importantforums and municipal leaders have hosted 175 meetings with representatives offoreign firms to introduce the city’s policies to lure investment and listen tothe firms’ questions.

He said thanks to theactive external relation work, Hanoi, for the first time in 30 years, rose tothe first position in FDI attraction in the first haft of 2018. As of the endof July 2018, aggregated foreign direct investment (FDI) in the city reachednearly 34 billion USD with 4,300 projects, making it the second biggest FDI destinationin Vietnam. The city also implemented 105 projects using official developmentassistance (ODA) capital with total committed capital of more than 4 billionUSD.

The foreign-investedsector contributes about 15 percent of the city’s total social investment andaccounts for about 16.5 percent of its regional gross domestic products.

In order to improvethe efficiency of external affairs activities, in the future, the city willcontinue reforming its FDI attraction policies, while focusing on expanding relationswith cities and capitals in the world as well as other countries, territoriesand international organisations, and combining political and economicdiplomacies, stated Chung.

He said that the citywill also broaden trade and tourism cooperation with countries around the world,make full use of assistance from them as well as international financial-monetaryinstitutions, expand export markets and promote its image globally.

Meanwhile, Chairman ofthe People’s Committee of the northern province of Thai Nguyen Vu Hong Bac toldthe successful story of the Republic of Korea’s Samsung Group in the provinceas one of the province’s achievements in external affairs.

Since 2010, ThaiNguyen has drawn 123 FDI firms with total registered capital of over 7.2 billionUSD and 130 valid projects, creating jobs for over 100,000 labourers.

Thai Nguyen ranks 10th among 63 localities nationwide in valid FDI, said Bac, adding that the provincehas concentrating on boosting the growth of industry, tourism, service, urbanareas, agriculture, forestry and environmental protection.

Ho Chi Minh City hasalso shown strong performance in international integration through localcooperation. Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Le Thanh Liemsaid that the city has set up friendly and cooperative relations with 50localities in various countries around the world with different targets basingon the city’s demands.

Sharing her experiencein connecting Vietnamese and Japanese localities, Nguyen Thi Phuong Hong, VietnameseConsul General in Japan’s Fukuoka said that Vietnamese localities should takeadvantage of the strong momentum in the Vietnam-Japan relations, which is inits best ever period, while making full use of the globalization andintegration trends of Japanese localities.

She advised that alongwith exchanging information and fostering coordination with representativeoffices abroad, domestic provinces and cities should engage in conferences,events and activities to promote themselves and attract attention from Japanesepartners.

Hong said Vietnam’srepresentative offices abroad often lack information about domestic localities,stressing the need for each locality to provide information for and keep close coordinationwith overseas Vietnamese representative missions to facilitate the missions’work.-VNA