Promoting economic diplomacy to fulfill dual goal amid widespread COVID-19
VOV.VN - The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) held a teleconference on July 30 to discuss measures aimed at boosting economic diplomacy in order to ensure the dual goal of both ensuring COVID-19 prevention and controlling socio-economic development.
The event brought together 96 ambassadors and heads of overseas representative agencies based in Vietnam.
As part of his speech, Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son said pushing ahead with vaccine diplomacy represents a key task of the nation’s overseas representative bodies. Indeed, they have been asked to perform this in order to help achieve the “twin targets” set in the second half of the year.
The brightest spot of economic diplomacy during the initial six months was vaccine diplomacy, which helped to persuade partners to provide the country with over 14 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, he added.
The MoFA has therefore been proactive in co-ordinating alongside relevant parties to deal with issues emerging in terms of the nation’s economic relations with partners globally, whilst also connecting foreign investors with Vietnamese localities and enterprises.
With the pandemic not set to conclude any time soon, but will likely develop more complicatedly, it will eventually ease due to the vaccination scheme, which will create conditions for the economy to reopen, Minister Son stated, while asking diplomats to be proactive and take creative actions to perform their duties.
Along with promoting vaccine diplomacy, they also need to keep a close watch in order to discover new trends both during and after the pandemic to advise the Government about national development strategies and orientations. This will serve to further expand and intensify Vietnamese economic ties with important partners and to capitalise on free trade agreements whilst enhancing locality and business matching activities. In addition, their efforts can help the country to adapt to external economic activities impacted by COVID-19 and proactively propose plans and road maps to resume economic activities and international travel.
As a means of carrying out these tasks, the Minister called on the entire diplomatic sector to spare no efforts or resources to fully meet national development goals.
For their part, the heads of overseas Vietnamese representative agencies said they are aware of their responsibility towards the homeland and citizens amid the entire nation striving to achieve the twin goal of containing the pandemic whilst also recovering socio-economic development.