During his reception on Thursday for Australian Consul-General in Ho Chi Minh City Karen Lanyon, Da Nang People’s Committee Vice Chairman Ho Ky Minh highly hailed fruitful results from bilateral cooperation with Australian localities in humanitarian, education, training, and cultural exchanges.

Vice Chairman Minh (right) and Consul-General Lanyon

Currently, a total of 15 businesses in Da Nang are maintaining trade relationships with their Australian partners.  

As of August 2017, the city had attracted 27 Australian-invested projects totalling nearly 3 billion USD.  By February 2017, under the city’s High-quality Human Resources Development Project, a total of 169 local outstanding students were studying in the largest country in Oceania.

Vice Chairman Minh remarked that this year marks the 50^th anniversary of the Viet Nam-Australia diplomatic ties (26 February).  He, hence, took the opportunity to ask for help from Australia to facilitate the organisation of celebration events in Da Nang, and Viet Nam as a whole, thereby helping to cement the relationships between the 2 countries.

In reply, Consul-General Lanyon hoped that Da Nang would be one of the key Vietnamese localities to organise a series of the anniversary celebrations.

The Australian diplomat also vowed that she would exert greater efforts to strengthen the bilateral ties in many aspects between Da Nang and Australian localities, and between the 2 countries as a whole.  Included are start-up activities, tourism promotion, development assistance programmes, vocational training, and developing human resources for restaurants and hotels.

On the same day, Director of the municipal Department of Foreign Affairs Lam Quang Minh hosted a group of representatives from the Trade and Investment Queensland, led by Mr John Osborn, the Queensland Government Director for International Business for Singapore.

Director Minh highly appreciated numerous achievements in the bilateral cooperation with Queensland, the second-largest and third-most-populous state in the Commonwealth of Australia, in various aspects, especially education.

Most notably, the municipal government and the Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning of the Queensland Government jointly entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on 29 August 2003. 

Under this agreement, the two sides together deployed many collaborative projects for furthering the tourism development in the Nam Hai Van area, and building strategies for tourism and investment promotion, plus other related aspects.

The Australian guest also underlined the importance of deepening the bilateral cooperation in vocational training, hi-tech agricultural development, and tourism in the years ahead.