Last Saturday, a group of Da Nang’s leaders, led by municipal People’s Committee Vice Chairman Ho Ky Minh, visited Sakai City in Japan.

Vice Chairman Minh (left) presenting a momento to Deputy Mayor Emiko

During her reception for the Da Nang guests, Deputy Mayor of Sakai City Hazama Emiko said that she was impressed with the city’s remarkable socio-economic achievements over recent years. 

The host took the opportunity to introduce her guests to her city’s strengths, and its great efforts in boosting bilateral trade cooperation with Vietnamese businesses.  She said proudly that Sakai was placed 2^nd in the Healthcare and Social Welfare Index rankings in Japan.  

Deputy Mayor Emiko also remarked that some Sakai representatives have been sent to the annual Viet Nam-Japan Cultural Exchange festivals in the city in order to introduce locals and visitors to their country’s traditional culture.  She also noted that recent years have seen a growing number of Vietnamese people who are studying or working in her city. 

The host said that a large bank in Japan would consider the opening of its representative office in Da Nang after Ho Chi Minh City.  She hoped that the bilateral cooperative relations with Da Nang would be deepened in the years ahead.

In reply, Vice Chairman Minh said “Da Nang boats strengths in such aspects as tourism, infrastructure development and information technology.  However, the number of Japanese tourist arrivals to the city is still low, with only 125,000 per year.  The city is focusing on building its hi-tech and software parks in order to attract even more Japanese investors.”

Mr Minh also asked for help from the Sakai authorities to appeal for even more their local businesses to visit and learn about Da Nang’s investment environment, as well as to provide documents for his city to teach Japanese language to its pupils, students and workers. 

In addition, the city leader suggested the Japanese locality to build a high-quality hospital in the city to meet increasing demand of Japanese expats here.  He also took the opportunity to invite Sakai guests to attend the Viet Nam-Japan Cultural Exchange Festival which will take place in July 2018 to mark the 45^th anniversary of the Viet Nam-Japan diplomatic ties.

Also at their meeting, leaders of Da Nang and Sakai agreed to lift cooperative relations between the two localities to partnership cities.  Accordingly, the focus will be on implementing short-term training exchange programmes between the two localities. 

In addition, Sakai will recruit Da Nang government employees to work in the short-term period, and send some local contestants to participate in the Da Nang International Marathons and the Da Nang International Firework Festivals.