Hungarian PM starts official visit to Vietnam
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his wife began their three-day official visit to Vietnam on September 24 at the invitation of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
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| Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán |
The two sides will discuss measures to promote the bilateral collaboration in wide-ranging fields, especially economics, trade, investment, education-training, healthcare, environment, security-defence, culture, and tourism as well as exchange regional and international issues of mutual concerns.
Since the establishment of diplomatic ties on February 3, 1950, Hungary has given Vietnam valuable support and assistance during the past struggle for national independence as well as in the current national construction.
In recent years, the two countries have deepened political ties based on mutual trust and understanding, laying a firm foundation for fostering cooperation in economics-trade-investment, culture, education and security-defence.
Bilateral economic cooperation has recorded significant progress with two-way trade reaching US$266 million in 2016, up 36.28 percent compared to the previous year. The figure hit US$145 million in the first half of 2017, a year-on-year increase of over 60 percent.Vietnam mainly exports garment, footwear, computers, electronic products, transport vehicles and spare parts to Hungary while importing medicine, machines, chemicals and animal feed from the European country.
As of the end of 2016, Hungary had 15 valid foreign direct investment (FDI) projects in Vietnam with total registered capital of US$50.66 million, ranking 55th among 105 countries and territories investing in Vietnam.
Vietnam and Hungary have inked a number of agreements, protocols and memoranda of understanding on science-technology, environment, double taxation avoidance, investment encouragement and protection, and agricultural cooperation.
Hungary is now home to more than 4,000 Vietnamese.