Vietnamese PM to attend ASEAN-Gulf Cooperation Council summit
VOV.VN - Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh will head a high-ranking delegation to a summit between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Gulf Cooperation Council to be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
On this occasion, the PM will also pay a visit to Saudi Arabia at the invitation of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
The working trip to Saudi Arabia is scheduled to last from October 18-20.
Founded in 1981, GCC, comprised of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, is an important organization in the Middle East. It is shifting to the East and showing its interest in Southeast Asia.
This is the first ever summit to be held between ASEAN and GCC which is expected to adopt a strategic cooperation plan with goals to be achieved in the coming two or four years.
All six GCC member states are Vietnam’s prioritized cooperation partners in the Middle East and Africa, with their relations spanning various fields, including politics, diplomacy, trade, investment, ODA and labour.
For Saudi Arabia, it considers Vietnam a priority partner in its Look East policy. two-way trade turnover between the two countries reached more than US$2.7 billion last year, up 32.4% year on year.
Several leading Saudi Arabian firms have poured their investments into Vietnam’s real estate, energy and steel industries. The Saudi Fund for Development has granted preferential aid worth US$181 million to 13 projects in Vietnam.
