Hanoi (VNA) - Strong trust, mutual understanding and convergence of viewsmark longstanding India-Vietnam ties, Ambassador Harish Parvathaneni told VietnamNews Agency on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic ties(January 7, 1972 - January 7, 2017).

Q:Can you give us a review of bilateral cooperation between Vietnam and India?

A:The civilisational relationship between India and Vietnam spans over 2000years, and the advent of Buddhism from India to Vietnam and the remnants of theHindu Champa civilisation in Vietnam stand testimony to this fact. Our monks,traders and peoples interacted over centuries and intense cultural exchangeshave left their imprint on our daily lives and activities. During ourrespective freedom struggles, the founding fathers of our nations were in closecontact, laying the foundation of trust and friendship; a valued relationshipthat successive generations of leaders have nurtured and built upon during Vietnam’sphase of national reunification and national reconstruction.

In2017, the two countries are celebrating the 45th anniversary of theestablishment of diplomatic relations and the 10th anniversary of our StrategicPartnership. During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Vietnam inSeptember 2016, he and Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc took the historic stepto elevate the relationship to that of ‘Strategic Comprehensive Partnership’, aclear indication of the importance the two countries place on theirrelationship of long-standing traditional friendship.

Therecent years have witnessed a number of visits of leaders from both sides,including at the highest political levels. We enjoy good relations betweenpolitical parties and legislative institutions and have established bilateralcooperation mechanisms. The relations between the two countries are marked bystrong trust, mutual understanding and convergence of views on variousinternational issues and the regional security situation in Asia.

Ourleaders have emphasised that enhancing bilateral economic engagement is astrategic objective. Bilateral trade is growing at a healthy pace and iscurrently around 8 billion USD; our leaders have set a trade target of 15billion USD by 2020, and both sides are committed to achieving it. India iskeen on increasing its investments in Vietnam, which is currently over 1.2billion USD, and would be tripling in a few years once some largeinfrastructure investments reach fruition. We would similarly like to inviteVietnamese business and industry to look at India as an attractive investmentdestination. We have identified priority areas for cooperation: hydrocarbons,power generation, renewable energy, infrastructure, tourism, textiles,footwear, medical services and pharmaceuticals, ICT, electronics, agriculture,agro-products, chemicals, machine tools and other supporting industries.

Therelationship between our leadership, peoples, governments, legislatures andpolitical parties is very strong and we remain committed to take it to greaterheights

Q: Please tell us about India’s Act East Policy and Vietnam’s role therein.

A:2017 also marks the 25th anniversary of ASEAN-India Dialogue Relations. Indiahas been a dialogue partner of ASEAN since 1992 and was accorded strategicpartner status in 2012. Vietnam is an important pillar of India’s ‘Act EastPolicy’. Vietnam has consistently supported the policy and welcomes a greaterrole for India in the regional and international arena. The ‘Act East’ policywas crystallised to underscore the importance of East Asian neighbours of Indiaand to make them a priority in our foreign policy. Our Act East policy looksbeyond the traditional paradigm and aims to forge alliances with our easternneighbors to encompass security, strategic, political, counterterrorism, anddefense collaboration in addition to economic ties. Vietnam is an integralmember of ASEAN and plays an important role in our Act East policy. Vietnam isASEAN’s Coordinator for ASEAN-India Dialogue Relations from 2015 to 2018 andthis would further facilitate closer cooperation between the two sides. Indiahas pledged 1 billion USD Line of Credit for enhancing digital and physicalconnectivity between India and ASEAN. We also look at Vietnam’s cooperation andsupport towards an early realisation of Regional Comprehensive EconomicPartnership (RCEP).

Q:What can Vietnam and India do in the near future to materialise theComprehensive Strategic Partnership between two countries?

A:The elevation of the Strategic Partnership between the two countries to that of‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ is a clear indication of the goodwill,trust and importance the two countries place on their relationship. It is alsoan acknowledgment of the existing strong bilateral defense and security tiesand our mutual desire to contribute to regional peace, stability, cooperationand prosperity.

The partnership covers a wide variety of topics including cooperation indevelopment, political exchanges, defense and security, human resourcedevelopment, commercial and economic ties, cultural exchanges, scholarships andOfficial Development Assistance.

Thepartnership between the two countries is extremely vibrant and dynamic;however, to fully realise the potential of the Comprehensive StrategicPartnership a lot more has to be done. Both sides are committed to achieve thetrade target of 15 billion USD by having greater trade and industry exchangesat the business and government levels and to remove all impediments to tradewith a focus on priority areas identified by our leaders. We also desire toenhance mutual investments in key sectors.

Defenceis an important component of our relationship and Prime Minister Narendra Modiduring his visit to Vietnam in 2016 announced a new Defence Line of Credit for Vietnamof 500 million USD for facilitating deeper defense industry cooperation. Thebilateral defence cooperation includes exchange of high level visits, annualhigh-level dialogues, service-to-service cooperation, naval ship visits,extensive training and capacity building, defence equipment procurement andrelated transfer of technology, and cooperation at regional fora such asADMM-Plus.

Thetwo countries will benefit immensely by having direct flight and shippingconnectivity. It is encouraging that in 2017, Vietjet would be starting directflights to India. The banking and financial sector linkages are being enhancedfor facilitating more intensive economic engagement. 2016 witnessed the openingof a branch of Bank of India in HCM City and we are happy that this month, Bankof India also received its licence for international foreign exchangetransactions which will assist Indian business and industry in Vietnam.

Indiahas an active portfolio of human resource development and capacity building in Vietnamin IT, English language training, entrepreneurship development,high-performance computing and other areas of Science and Technology. The twocountries are also collaborating in Peaceful uses of Nuclear Technology, and aFramework Agreement on this was signed during the recent visit of Chairperson ofNational Assembly, Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan to India in December, 2016. We arealso collaborating on the Exploration of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes andwe signed a Framework Agreement for the same during the visit of Prime MinisterModi last year.

Weneed to further enhance our people to people contact by promoting tourism andculture. There is a need for more cultural exchanges. The newly opened IndianCultural Centre (ICC) in Hanoi would enable the people of Vietnam to get easyaccess to information on culture and tourism of India, and would also serve toshowcase Indian culture and performing arts. We are already successfullyconducting classical dance, music and yoga classes in the ICC. The library atthe center is open to public giving them access to various volumes of selectIndian literature and books. We would soon be expanding our activities to haveexhibitions and other cultural programs and events at the center.

TheIndian Embassy gives out numerous scholarships to Vietnamese citizens especiallyunder the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme.Presently, 150 ITEC slots are being offered to Vietnam every year along with 16scholarships under the General Cultural Scholarship Scheme (GCSS), 14scholarships under the Educational Exchange Programme (EEP) and 10 scholarshipsunder the Mekong Ganga Cooperation (MGC) Scholarship Scheme.

Itis only with such a multi-pronged approach that we can actualise theComprehensive Strategic Partnership between the two countries and harness thetrue potential for greatness of our countries and peoples.-VNA