Tokyo (VNA) – Prime Ministers Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Shinzo Abe reached highconsensus on major orientations and specific measures to push forward the extensivestrategic partnership between Vietnam and Japan in a more comprehensive,practical and effective manner during their talks in Tokyo on June 6.

PMPhuc affirmed that Vietnam consistently considers Japan a top and long-termeconomic partner and attaches extreme importance to the strategic cooperationin economy with Japan.  

PMAbe highly valued Vietnam’s increasingly important role in the region and theworld and vowed to provide strong support for Vietnam’s development with theinvolvement of Japanese small and medium-sized enterprises, corporations andresearch institutes.  

Thetwo PMs gave high estimations to the first State visit to Vietnam by theEmperor and Empress, and agreed to strengthen political trust, regularlymaintain high-level visits and meetings, and improve the efficiency of theexisting dialogue mechanisms.

Abepromised full support for Vietnam to successfully hold the Asia-Pacific EconomicCooperation (APEC) Summit in the central city of Da Nang in November 2017.

Bothsides were committed to collaboration in national defence-security, the UnitedNations peacekeeping mission as well as post-war recovery.

Theyvowed to promote economic connectivity via extending links across investment,trade, official development assistance (ODA), high-tech agriculture and labour.

Hostand guest were unanimous in promoting Japanese investments in Vietnam viaeffectively launching the sixth stage of the Vietnam-Japan Joint Initiative andstrengthening public-private partnership.

Theyasserted close cooperation to launch action plans of six sectors named inVietnam’s industrialisation strategy within the Vietnam-Japan cooperation frameworkuntil 2020 with a vision to 2030 and speed up the progress of majorinfrastructure projects such as the North-South Highway, Hoa Lac High-tech Parkand urban railway.

Thefourth high-level dialogue on agriculture will be held soon this year whileprocedures to facilitate Vietnam-grown litchi and longan’s access to Japan andJapanese orange and tangerine’s entry into Vietnam will be accelerated.

The leaders agreed to step up cooperation across education, human resourcestraining and locality-to-locality affiliations.

Thehost leader affirmed support for Vietnam to carry out a project on improvingpolitical system operation and training managerial officials at all levels,particularly those in strategic positions. Japan will initially train 800Vietnamese master and doctorate degree holders in the next five years.

Theleaders agreed to promote cultural, sports and people-to-people exchanges whileworking closely together to celebrate the 45th anniversary ofbilateral diplomatic ties in 2018.

Onregional and global issues of shared concern, they vowed close coordination atmultilateral forums such as ASEAN, APEC, Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), and theUnited Nations.

Regardingthe East Sea issue, they underscored the importance of ensuring peace,security, maritime and aviation safety and freedom, and called on partiesconcerned to refrain from unilateral actions, including militarising, changing thestatus quo, complicating and extending the disputes in the East Sea; promote thesettlement of disputes by peaceful means, fully respect diplomatic and legalprocesses in line with international law, including the 1982 UN Convention onthe Law of the Sea; fully and effectively implement the Declaration on theConduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) and promptly reach a Code of Conductin the East Sea (COC).

After their talks, the two PMs witnessed theexchange of 14 signed documents between Vietnamese and Japanese ministries andagencies. 

The documents include the diplomatic notes for theexchange of four official development assistance (ODA) projects worth 100.3billion JPY (roughly 912 million USD).

Others are diplomatic notes for the exchange ofthree nonrefundable aid projects valued at 2.93 billion JPY (26.6 million USD),covering the operation of reservoirs in case of emergencies and effective floodmanagement through the inclusive natural disaster management informationsystem; and the Human Resources Development Scholarship Programme in 2017 and2018. 

The two leaders then met with the press toinform major outcomes of their talks, during which they stressed that the twosides reached many important common perceptions in order to deepen theVietnam-Japan extensive strategic partnership across fields in the time ahead,especially by enhancing mutual political trust, promoting economic ties andclosely cooperating with each other in regional and international issues of sharedconcern. 

PM Shinzo Abe said Japan, with its outstandingtechnologies and experience, is resolved to contribute to building high-qualityinfrastructure, improving the investment environment and developing humanresources in Vietnam, thus creating business opportunities that bring benefitsto both sides.

Regarding the wave of protectionism andanti-globalisation, the Japanese PM pledged that he will work together with hisVietnamese counterpart to push up free trade and investment. 

Japan will comprehensively support Vietnam’shosting of the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting slated for November in thecentral city of Da Nang, he committed. 

The two countries will also join hands with eachother to soon materialise the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement and theRegional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). 

PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc affirmed the VietnameseGovernment’s resolve to effectively use Japan’s ODA, build a transparentinvestment environment, create optimal conditions for Japanese investors andseriously implement commitments made at the investment promotion conference onJune 5. 

During the PM’s visit, the two countries’ministries, agencies and localities signed 43 foreign direct investment (FDI)documents valued at over 22 billion USD, he said. 

Vietnam welcomes and backs Japan’s initiativesto ensure the economic prosperity, freedom of trade and maritime safety on thebasis of respecting the UN Charter and international law, as well asindependence and sovereignty of countries, for peace, stability, cooperationand development in the region and the world at large, the PM said.-VNA