UK to help Vietnam with smart city building

Edward Vaizey told Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue in Hanoi on October 5 that the UK Government attaches importance to Vietnam’s role in cooperation and development. 

The UK wishes to help improve economic skills for Vietnamese people, assist the country in raising transparent administration capacity and participate in infrastructure development using high technologies in the country, he said. 

The UK is conducting procedures to withdraw from the European Union. However, benefits brought about by the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) to Vietnam and the UK should be maintained at a free trade agreement between the two countries,  Edward Vaizey said. 

The UK is ready to push ahead with commitments between the EU and Vietnam as the country is still an EU member, the envoy said. 

He thanked the Vietnamese Government for its support to the UK in accessing the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). 

For his part, Deputy PM Hue affirmed that the strategic partnership between Vietnam and the UK is development fruitfully. 

The official also thanked the UK Government for its assistance to Vietnam in signing and ratifying the EVFTA, and promised that the Vietnamese Government always backs and stands ready to help the UK join the CPTPP. 

Hue urged the two countries to enhance their bilateral trade ties as two-way trade value stood at only over US$6.1 billionin 2017, and called on the UK to expand its investment in Vietnam in finance-banking given its investment capital in the country reaching only US$3.7 billion. 

Vietnamese ministries and agencies are willing to remove difficulties facing UK investors in Vietnam, Hue said, expressing his hope to receive more support from the Commonwealth Foundation to realise projects in Vietnam and that Vietnamese goods would penetrate more deeply into the Mc Spencer supermarket chain.