Prime Minister meets Singaporean President

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Thursday paid a courtesy visit to Singaporean President Halimah Yacob within the framework of his on-going three-day official visit to Singapore.

President Halimah Yacob highlighted the significance of the Vietnamese leader's visit which takes place on the occasion of the 50^th founding anniversary of diplomatic ties and the 10^th anniversary of the establishment of strategic partnership between the two countries.

The visit will promote the bilateral relationship more strongly and practically, she emphasized.

The host spoke highly of the operation of Viet Nam-Singapore Industrial Parks (VSIP), which is considered as a success in the bilateral ties, expressing thanks to the Vietnamese Government for facilitating Singaporean enterprises to operate in the country.

For his part, Pham encouraged Singaporean enterprises to expand and develop the VSIPs in a green, smart and energy-saving manner and suggested Singapore consider opening more VSIPs in Viet Nam.

He took the occasion to ask both nations to early sign an agreement on labor cooperation.

Both sides noted with pleasure that visits exchanged at all levels right after Viet Nam and Singapore re-opened their borders in 2022 have helped increase trust and pave the way for economic recovery and development in respective countries.

The two leaders expressed their delight on the fruitful development in Viet Nam-Singapore relations across all sectors.

They pledged to deepen cooperation pillars, especially politics, economics, security, defense, education, training and high-quality human resources as well as enhance people-to-people exchanges and tourism, while endorsing initiatives on maritime connectivity and foster collaboration in new areas.

The host and the guest committed to bolstering coordination at multi-lateral forums such as ASEAN, APEC and the United Nations and vowed to build a sustainable, united and strong ASEAN Community.

They pledged to work together to ensure the central role and principled stance of ASEAN in addressing international and regional issues, including the East Sea issue.

Both sides emphasized the need to closely coordinate in fully implementing the Declaration of the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) and striving to successfully build a substantive and effective Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC) in line with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS 1982)./.