Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has hailed the contributions to fostering Vietnam-Japan relations by President of the East Asian Community Institute of Japan Hatoyama Yukio, who is former Prime Minister of Japan and former chairman of the Japan-Vietnam Friendship Parliamentary Alliance.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) and President of the East Asian
Community Institute of Japan Hatoyama Yukio (Photo: VNA) 

At a reception for the Japanese guest in Hanoi on November 12, PM Phuc extolled the growing Vietnam-Japan strategic partnership across multiple fields, particularly economic, trade and investment cooperation.

He thanked Hatoyama for his contributions to boosting Vietnam-Japan ties, saying that the former Japanese PM paid great attention to developing the relationship between the two nations in a wide range of fields.

Hatoyama attended many forums and workshops on Vietnam’s technology development, launched numerous charity programmes presenting wheelchairs to people with disabilities in the Southeast Asian nation.

The Vietnamese cabinet leader expressed his appreciation for Hatoyama Yukio's continued interest and ideas to step up cooperation in a multitude of fields such as human resource training and infrastructure development, in which the two countries have the demand and potential to broaden cooperation. The PM said he believes that Hatoyama would continue to make positive contributions to strengthening bilateral relations between Vietnam and Japan.

(Photo: VGP) 

The Japanese guest, in turn, showed his elation at the fruitful cooperation between the two countries, and his interest in the building of infrastructure in the form of public-private partnership (PPP) which is being debated by the Vietnamese National Assembly.

He also suggested the two countries augment cooperation in human resources.

Japan remains the largest provider of ODA for Vietnam and the second largest foreign investor in the country, as well as the fourth largest trade partner.

People-to-people exchanges and local cooperation have been strengthened with every year seeing more than 1.2 million Vietnamese and Japanese people travel to their respective nations. The Vietnamese community in Japan has exceeded 370,000, becoming the third biggest foreign community in the East Asian nation.