Soon to announce Japanese grapes into Vietnam and Vietnamese green-skinned pomelos to Japan

On May 21, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh held talks with Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio while attending the expanded G7 Summit.

This is the first Vietnam-Japan high-level meeting held in Hiroshima, the hometown of Prime Minister Kishida, and the fifth meeting between Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Prime Minister Kishida in more than a year.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh congratulated Prime Minister Kishida and the host country Japan for successfully organizing the G7 and the expanded G7 Summits; he highly appreciated Japan's coordinating role in reaching a consensus in solving global challenges such as food security and emission reduction.

Prime Minister Kishida expressed his pleasure to meet with Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh again and welcomed the active and effective participation and contribution of the Vietnamese delegation, contributing to the success of the G7 Expanded Summit, affirming that Vietnam has a leading position in the implementation of Japan's foreign policy in the region.

In the atmosphere of friendship, friendliness, and trust, the two leaders expressed satisfaction with the robust, comprehensive, and substantive development of the two countries' relations over the past time; agreed on significant directions and specific measures to promote the extensive strategic partnership between Vietnam and Japan for peace and prosperity in Asia to a new point.

The two Prime Ministers agreed to strengthen political trust by promoting high-level visits and contacts in 2023 - the 50th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations between Vietnam and Japan.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh respectfully conveyed the invitation to visit Vietnam by the Party and State of Vietnam leaders to Japan's Emperor and Empress.

The two sides agreed to promote defense-security cooperation in the fields of overcoming war consequences, training human resources, transferring defense technology and cyber security, facilitating the exchange of Japanese support for Vietnam in industrialization and modernization, and building an independent and self-reliant economy, affirming to strengthen linkages between the two economies through boosting investment and trade cooperation.

The two leaders highly appreciated the completion of the procedures for committing capital to the new generation ODA program for economic recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic with a scale of JPY 50 billion, and agreed to hand over the ministries and sub-sectors responsible for discussing Japan's ability to provide new generation ODA with high incentives, simple and flexible procedures for large-scale strategic infrastructure development projects in Vietnam such as the Northern-South high-speed railway, urban railway construction, climate change fight, digital transformation, green transformation and health.

The two Prime Ministers affirmed that they would direct the ministries and branches of the two countries to accelerate the progress of a number of ODA cooperation projects such as Cho Ray Hospital 2, the construction project of urban railway No.1 Ben Thanh - Suoi Tien.

Regarding the Nghi Son Oil Refinery project, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh suggested businesses of the two countries actively exchange in the spirit of harmonizing benefits, sharing risks, and removing difficulties of the project..

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh suggested the two sides work together to promote a new wave of Japanese investment in Vietnam in the high-tech industry, energy conversion, production capacity improvement, and competitiveness for Vietnam to participate deeply and widely in the supply chain of Japanese enterprises and the global supply chain; proposed Japan to encourage strategic investors in the field of clean energy and renewable energy of Vietnam; supporting Vietnam to increase the value chain of agricultural products through technology transfer, capacity building in the field of distribution and processing; promote procedures and coordinate the early announcement of Japanese grapes into Vietnam and Vietnamese green-skinned pomelos into Japan.

The Prime Minister also proposed the Japanese Government create favorable conditions, simplify visa procedures, move towards exempting entry visas for Vietnamese citizens to promote tourism cooperation between the two countries, soon implement the form of study tourism; interested in and creating favorable conditions for the community of nearly 500,000 Vietnamese people to live, study and work conveniently in Japan, becoming a bridge in the cooperation relationship between the two countries.

The two sides affirmed to coordinate their stances on issues of mutual concern at multilateral and regional forums such as ASEAN, the United Nations, and APEC.

Prime Minister Kishida invited Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh to revisit Japan and attend the ASEAN - Japan Summit in December 2023.

Regarding the East Sea issue, the two leaders emphasized the importance of ensuring maritime and aviation security and safety and resolving all disputes and disagreements by peaceful means based on international law, especially the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 1982; fully implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and soon complete an effective Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC).