Cuba and Venezuela rivet trade relations

With Cuba and Venezuela opening their door wider to foreign investment, Vietnam is further expanding bilateral trade cooperation with these Latin American nations. Khoi Nguyen reports.

- Khoi Nguyen

Le Hoai Trung, special envoy of Vietnamese Party General Secretary and State President To Lam and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, last week paid an official visit to Cuba and Venezuela.

In Cuba, Minister Trung met with Cuban leaders, and had bilateral talks with counterpart Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla. The Cuban leaders held that important lessons of Vietnam over the past 40 years are valuable for Cuba to conduct its economic reform.

They highly value encouraging results in multi-sided cooperation between the two countries over the past time, particularly in agriculture and fishery, according to Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA).

Vietnam and Cuba have agreed to further strengthen and deepen economic, trade and investment cooperation, with particular emphasis on strategic sectors identified by the high-level leadership of both countries, including solar energy, biotechnology-pharmaceuticals, and agriculture.

Minister Parrilla stressed that Vietnam is the biggest investor of Asia and Oceania on the island country, with projects in strategic sectors such as agri-food, production of essential goods, construction materials and renewable energies. He acknowledged the valuable contribution of Vietnam in the agri-food sector, where joint initiatives for rice, coffee, and corn production have strengthened bilateral cooperation.

He also emphasised that Vietnam has become the main supplier of rice to Cuba, contributing decisively to its food security.

According to a joint statement released in early September last year, the two sides pledged to “support, create better conditions, and encourage the development of new cooperation models appropriate to the situation and strengths of research organisations, training institutions and enterprises.”