Moscow (VNA) – Vietnam and Russiareached consensus on various measures to step up bilateral ties during the 21st session of the Vietnam-Russia Inter-Governmental Committee forEconomic-Commercial and Scientific-Technological Cooperation in Moscow on October 29.

They concurred to implement high-level agreements reachedduring the official visit to Russia by General Secretary of the Communist Partyof Vietnam Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong last September.

Both sides held that economic, trade and investment ties betweenVietnam and Russia have developed dynamically over the pasttime, with the effective realisation of the free trade agreement between Vietnam and the Eurasian Economic Union to whichRussiais a member.

Two-way trade reached 3.55 billion USD in 2017, up 31percent against the same period last year. The turnover stood at 3.4 billionUSD in the first nine months of this year, up 36.8 percent year-on-year.

Investment cooperation has also been expanded as seenthrough Vietnam’s biginvestment projects in Russia.

They shared the view that the two countries have a lot ofpotential for collaboration, particularly in the areas of their strength likeenergy, agriculture, industry, transport, science-technology, andeducation-training.

Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung and his Russiancounterpart Maksim Akimov, who co-chaired the meeting, discussed concrete measuresto foster the bilateral affiliation amidst the Fourth Industrial Revolution,especially in trade-investment, information-technology, transportinfrastructure, finance-banking, energy, science and education-training.

They consented to consider the lift of non-tariff barriers inimport-export, particularly in agriculture and fisheries, aiming to raise thebilateral trade to 10 billion USD in 2020 as set by leaders of the twocountries.

The two sides also compared notes on measures to enhancebilateral transactions by domestic currencies.

In the sphere of energy, they agreed to create morefavourable conditions for oil and gas projects, while expanding thecollaboration in other fields like liquefied natural gas (LNG) and electricity.

They looked into promising transport infrastructure cooperationprojects, especially railway ones in Vietnam.

At the end of the session, the two Deputy PMs witnessed thesigning of some cooperation agreements between Vietnamese and Russianbusinesses and organisations in the fields of banking, telecommunications andeducation-training.

The 22nd session of the committee is scheduled tobe held in Vietnamin 2019.

The Deputy PMs told the press that the meeting was asuccess, further explaining that they discussed major cooperation areas in a candid,open, practical and comprehensive manner.-VNA