Putin's on his way to Vietnam right after the trip to North Korea finishes
https://theinvestor.vn/vietnam-seeks-ai-energy-space-cooperation-with-russia-in-putins-fifth-visit-d10742.html
Vietnam seeks AI, energy, space cooperation with Russia in Putin’s fifth visit
By Tri Duc
Tue, June 18, 2024 | 10:54 pm GMT+7
Vietnam seeks stronger ties with Russia in key areas corresponding to its needs and Russian strengths, a senior diplomat said on the eve of President Vladimir Putin’s fifth visit to the country.
The visit is being made at the invitation of Vietnam's Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
In a preview conversation cited by the ministry ahead of Putin’s two-day (June 19-20) state visit to Vietnam, Vietnamese Ambassador to Russia Dang Minh Khoi listed life sciences, energy technology, space technology, natural resources, finance-technology (fintech), artificial intelligence (AI), and biomedical science as some of the areas with cooperation potential.
Elaborating on Vietnam-Russia cooperation in science-technology, Khoi noted that the two countries should design suitable policies and financial sources for joint research and project implementation, while conducting more delegation exchanges.
On education-training, another key cooperation area between the two countries, Khoi said Vietnam and Russia are preparing to sign a new treaty to replace the one signed in 2005; as also other agreements related to establishment of a language-culture Pushkin center in Vietnam and training in Russia for Vietnamese citizens.
Currently, the Russian government provides 1,000 scholarships annually to Vietnam, the diplomat noted. Vietnam should focus on sending students to Russia to pursue courses in technology, applied sciences, fintech, healthcare, and culture-arts, Khoi added.
Putin’s visit to Vietnam will fortify mutual respect, friendship, and unity between the two countries, benefiting both peoples and promoting peace and stability in the region and the world, the ambassador anticipated.
During the Russian president’s visit, the leadership of both countries will discuss cooperation steps until 2030, focusing on economy-trade, defense-security, energy, science-technology-education and people-to-people ties.
Trade between Vietnam and Russia reached $5.5 billion in 2021, fell to $3.55 billion in 2022 and rebounded 2.3% to $3.63 billion in 2023, according to Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade and the General Statistics Office. In the first five months of 2024, the figure rose 51.4% year-on-year to $1.96 billion.
As of this May, Russia's direct investment in Vietnam hit $1 billion with 186 projects, while corresponding figures for Vietnam's investment in Russia were $3 billion and 25 projects, according to Vietnam's Ministry of Planning and Investment.
In an interview granted to Vietnam News Agency in Moscow, Dr. Ivan Nikolaievich Timofeev, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), commented that the upcoming Vietnam state visit by President Putin demonstrates the Eurasian nation’s keen interest in strengthening the bilateral relations.
Advancing economic and trade cooperation will be a top priority for both nations, and the visit will catalyse digital transformation efforts. Additionally, the oil and gas sector remains a key area of economic cooperation between Vietnam and Russia.
It's good to see the relationship being taken more into the realm of innovative economic sectors. There are over 5000 Vietnamese students in Russian universities across all sorts of fields and that's a good basis for such co-operation. But that number of students has actually been pretty much constant for the last 10 years if not more and this actually points to a problem.
As up to now Vietnam and Russia have co-operated quite extensively in oil & gas, with the VietSovpetro joint-venture dating all the way back to the Soviet era, as well as seafood and agricultural trade, and of course defense-industrial equipment; but little else.
Prior to the Coronavirus, bilateral trade was just over $7 billion dollars, about the same level as Vietnam has with Brazil. Which is a pittance considering Vietnamese-Indian and Vietnamese-Indonesian trade was some $14 billion each, Vietnamese-Japanese trade at nearly $50 billion and Vietnamese-South Korean at over $87 billion.
It's not even worth mentioning the sum of bilateral Vietnamese trade with the US and China, which is well over $100 billion apiece.
After the pandemic began trade dipped, and it dipped again with the start of the SVO. It has recovered somewhat this year, projecting to reach maybe $5 billion dollars; but that's still a good deal even below what it was in 2021.
Russia is the 4th largest economy in the world now by some margin. Vietnam is probably within the top-10 of the Asia-Pacific region. These miserly volumes have no excuse. Nor the stagnation in terms of Vietnamese coming to Russia to gain an education.
Over the past few years the Vietnamese TH Group has been active in the Far East of Russia, investing a lot into agriculture and livestock. This is a good trend and should be encouraged.
But alone it's not enough. There should be a lot more trade and joint-ventures set up with Vietnam in the areas of fishing, horticulture, shipbuilding, auto-transport, pharmaceuticals, industrial equipment, power generation/transmission, textiles and other areas. In addition of course to the IT and scientific sectors mentioned prior.
https://theinvestor.vn/vietnam-dairy-maker-th-group-kicks-off-204-mln-project-in-eastern-russia-d10220.html
Vietnam dairy maker TH Group kicks off $204 mln project in eastern Russia
By Nguyen Huong, Minh Hue
Wed, May 22, 2024 | 4:25 pm GMT+7
TH Group JSC, a leading Vietnamese dairy firm, on Tuesday kicked off construction of a VND5.2 trillion ($204.23 million) milk processing and cow farming project in Primorsky Krai territory, eastern Russia.
The project includes a farm with 12,000 cows, including 6,000 dairy cows, a milk processing factory with a capacity of 250 tons per day, and a raw materials.
This is an important milestone in the process of implementing TH Group's dairy plans in Russia, following successes in Kaluga province and Moscow, where TH farms and factories are considered the localities' key economic development projects.
The TH Group project is expected to revive the great agricultural potential that has been ignored for a long time in the far east of Russia, said company chairman Ngo Minh Hai at the ground-breaking ceremony.
When the factory is put into operation at the end of 2027, all input materials will be provided by the farm cluster, officially forming a closed, high-tech production chain "from grassland to glass of milk”, contributing to the regional GDP growth of the Primorsky region, he said.
In addition to raising dairy cows and processing milk, TH Group will also grow plants such as alfalfa grass and soybeans for export, he added.
Vietnamese Consul General in Vladivostok Nguyen Dang Hien assessed that this is the first project by a Vietnamese enterprise investing in the region, and also a new development step in economic and investment cooperation between the two countries, despite the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and recent world geopolitical fluctuations.
"I believe that, with the efforts and determination of TH Group as well as the love for Russia of its chairwoman Thai Huong, the project will soon come into operation effectively, bringing practical economic value to Vietnam and Russia, and strengthening the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries,” he stated.
Chief of Yakovlevsky district Korenchuk Alexey Alexandrovich expressed his expectations for changes to the area after the TH project goes into operation. He thanked TH Group for implementing the project, which will create job opportunities for local people.
Outstanding mindset
The coastal territory of Primorsky Krai, with its administrative center in Vladivostok city, has the largest economy in the far east of Russia. It serves as a gateway connecting Russia with the Asia-Pacific region.
In 2023, trade turnover between Vietnam and the region reached $257 million, of which the Primorsky region, with the seaports of Nakhodka and Vladivostok, accounted for about 65%, or $167 million.
TH Group, led by Thai Huong – founder and chairwoman of TH Group’s Strategic Council, is one of the Vietnamese investors to have recognized the region’s potential and opportunities.
At the beginning of 2017, after Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Trutnev’s official visit to Vietnam and working session with TH Group to introduce the potential of the region, TH Group sent a delegation of experts to survey potential sites in Primorsky Krai. The Vietnamese firm officially became a member of the Mikhailovsky Advanced Special Economic Zone in September 2017.
TH Group has been running the cow farm and milk processing complex project in Russia since 2016, when Russia was suffering from sanctions imposed by Western countries, pushing the Russian people to a shortage of milk and dairy products.
TH Group is Vietnam's largest investor in Russia in the agricultural sector. Now its dairy complex has two farms with more than 6,000 dairy cows. Another farm is under construction in Moscow and a dairy factory in Kaluga province has been completed.
With high determination, TH Group has turned tens of thousands of hectares of land abandoned for decades in Russia into fertile, highly productive fields.
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