Vietnam and Australia celebrate 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties
VOV.VN - Vietnam and Australia have recorded plenty of achievements across multiple fields of cooperation over the past five decades, from politics to investment, trade, education, as well as defense and security, said Phan Van Mai, chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City administration.
Mai made the statement at a ceremony held in HCM City on February 24 to mark the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties between Vietnam and Australia.
Economic cooperation is one of the outstanding highlights of joint ties, he said, noting Australia became Vietnam’s seventh largest trading partner last year with two-way trade hitting more than US$15.6 billion. Australia ranked 20th out of 141 countries and territories investing in Vietnam with 583 projects capitalised at nearly US$2 billion.
Most notably, trade and investment ties between Ho Chi Minh City and Australia have also developed strongly, with their trade exchanges bringing in over US$1.2 billion last year.
Australia currently has 274 investment projects in the southern city with a total registered capital of more than US$200 million.
A key initiative is the RMIT University Project - the first 100% foreign-invested university in Vietnam that has trained thousands of students, contributing to improving the quality of human resources in the southern metropolis.
In addition, Mai said HCM City also has established dynamic ties with Australian states such as Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, and the Northern Territory in the fields of trade, education-training and innovation, creativity, culture, tourism, and people-to-people exchanges.
The HCM City leader expressed his belief that the dynamic development of Ho Chi Minh City-Australia relations will make a positive contribution to the sustainable development enjoyed by Vietnam and Australia moving forward.
Australian Ambassador to Vietnam Andrew Goledzinowski, for his part, emphasized that the time-honoured relationship over the past five decades has been built on mutual trust, paving the way for both sides to establish a Strategic Partnership in 2018 and upgrading the relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in the near future.
The diplomat stressed that HCM City has become the centre of trade-investment relations between the two sides with about 75% of Australian investment in Vietnam located in the south, mainly in Ho Chi Minh City and other neighbouring provinces.
The city is also the location which has yielded positive results of co-operation between the two sides in the field of education, particularly through the presence of RMIT University and Western Sydney University.
The Australian diplomat expressed his belief that based on the close relationship that exists between the two governments, joint relations will further grow and reap additional success in multiple areas, such as innovation and climate change, education and training, defense and security.
Ho Chi Minh City will continue to play a pivotal role in making the two countries' relations stronger and deeper moving forward, he noted.
