Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung left Ha Noi on October 27 for a three-day official visit to India at the invitation of his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung (Photo: VNA)

The visit aims to enhance the strategic partnership between the two countries, especially in economy, science-technology, culture-education, tourism and aviation. The leaders will discuss regional and international issues of mutual concern.

Viet Nam and India enjoyed a time-honoured relationship which was founded by President Ho Chi Minh and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and nurtured by generations of Vietnamese and Indian leaders and people.

They established diplomatic ties in 1972 and later strategic partnership in 2007 around the five pillars of politics, defence-security, economy-trade, science-technology, and culture and personnel training.

Both nations have worked closely together at global and regional forums such as the ASEAN-India dialogue, the East Asia Summit, the Non-Aligned Movement and the United Nations (UN). Viet Nam backed India as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for the 2011-2012 tenure.

India, in turn, sided with Viet Nam in its bid to join the UN Human Rights Council for 2014-2016 term and seek a non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council for 2020-2021 term.

On the East Sea issue, India has supported Viet Nam’s stance on the peaceful settlement of disputes in line with international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties (DOC) in the East Sea .

Regarding bilateral economic and trade ties, two-way trade surged 35 percent year-on-year to 5.23 billion USD in 2013, including 2.3 billion USD worth of Vietnam’s exports, mostly coal, pepper, electronic accessories, rubber, fiber, footwear and chemicals. The two sides have set the target of 10 billion USD in trade by 2015 and 15 billion USD by 2020.

India has recognised Viet Nam as a market economy.

By May 2014, India poured 273 million USD into 78 projects in Viet Nam, primarily in oil and gas, mineral processing, sugar, agricultural chemicals, information technology and farm produce processing.

(Source: VNA)