New milestone in the history of Vietnam-Egypt relations

Vietnamese Ambassador to Egypt Do Hoang Long

The visit marks a new milestone in the history of bilateral ties between Vietnam and Egypt amid the 55th anniversary of their diplomatic ties (1963-2018). This is the first visit to the North African country by a head of the State of Vietnam since both nations established diplomatic ties in 1963.

With regard to the great significance of the visit for bilateral ties, the Vietnamese diplomat said first of all, this is a visit in response to the trip to Vietnam by Egyptian President Fatah El Sisi in 2017 which witnessed a lot of remarkable achievements.

The visit is to reaffirm commitments reached in 2017 by senior leaders in the aim of actualizing new areas of cooperation.

Concerning the priority areas that the two countries will focus on fully taping the advantages and potential of each country, Mr Long said Egypt is highly interested in Vietnam’s skills, know-how and cultivation techniques, therefore, it desires to share experience in farming, breeding, and especially aquaculture.

In addition, Vietnam can cooperate with Egypt in the manufacturing sector as electrical and electronics products of Vietnam are gaining popularity in Egypt and Vietnam is shipping quite a lot of such products to the North African nation.

“In other areas, we can share and exploit areas of Egypt’s strengths such as tourism, culture and sports. In terms of politics and diplomacy, the two sides have offered mutual support at both bilateral and multilateral forums for international cooperation,” he said.

Asked about what should be done to achieve the US$1 billion trade target as set by the two countries’ senior leaders in the coming time, Long underlined the need to redouble combined efforts by different ministries and sectors and look at what is the biggest obstacle for the two sides’ failure to reach the annual trade target of US$1 billion

“I think the biggest hindrance is little mutual understanding about each other's market. Egyptian businesses see Vietnam as a developing economy and they are in need of strong market access, but resources of enterprises remain limited.

Besides, insufficient, inaccurate and incomprehensive information about Vietnam is also another hindrance to Egypt while Vietnamese businesses are sometimes hesitant to make decisions to access this African market to which they are still worried about payment procedures and cultural differences.

There are many barriers in terms of mechanisms, the legal corridor, incomplete trade and labour agreements as well as other deals. Consequently, the two governments need to scrutinize signed documents to see how effective they are carried out and what are obstacles to the actual implementation of reached documents in order to create a favourable legal corridor for enterprises’ operations. Additionally, there should be more mechanisms for sharing information among businesses,” he noted.

Culturally, both sides should further intensify cross-cultural and people-to-people exchanges which are not regularly conducted as expected.

Politically, it requires a great deal of political effort and support from the two countries’ leaders, and thus the visit to Egypt by the President is of great significance in this regard.