President Nguyen Xuan Phuc on November 19 met with Chief Executive of the Hong Kong (China) Special Administrative Region Lee Ka-chiu on the sidelines of the 29th APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Thailand. (Photo: Nguyen Hong)

President Nguyen Xuan Phuc on November 19 met with Chief Executive of the Hong Kong (China) Special Administrative Region Lee Ka-chiu and Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kristalina Georgieva on the sidelines of the 29th APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Thailand.

Meeting the Hong Kong leader, President Phuc expressed his wish for strengthened exchanges between the authorities, businesses and people of the two sides. He invited Lee to soon visit Vietnam.

Phuc welcomed Hong Kong firms to invest in Vietnam’s sustainable and environmentally friendly fields, and hoped they will support Vietnamese enterprises’ participation in trade, investment and tourism promotion activities in Hong Kong.

The State leader said he wants Vietnam and Hong Kong to boost collaboration in economy, trade, and investment toward pushing their bilateral trade to 50 billion USD in the next five years; and to expand engagements in culture, education, tourism, and labour.

For his part, Lee affirmed that Hong Kong values and is willing to strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation with Vietnam in various fields.

Agreeing with the five-year trade goal towards making Vietnam Hong Kong's largest trading partner in ASEAN, he stressed his willingness to promote the bilateral people-to-people exchanges, including in tourism, education and labour.

He said he hopes the sides will coordinate in immigration management.

At the meeting with the IMF Managing Director, the President lauded joint works between Vietnam and the fund so far, particularly IMF’s consultations on Vietnam's macroeconomic management, restructuring, and growth model innovation.

President Nguyen Xuan Phuc on November met with Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kristalina Georgieva. (Photo: VNA)

Given the context that the global economy is volatile with increasing inflation, the economic growth of many countries and regions is slowing down, and the ensuring of food and energy security is facing many difficulties, Phuc stated Vietnam, IMF and other nations must strengthen collaboration and coordination of policies and guidelines to effectively deal with such issues.

Georgieva said she wishes Vietnam to make further contributions to the global agenda of transforming growth models and securing supply chains.

The leader said that the IMF will step up support and advice for Vietnam in economic management and growth model renovation.

On the afternoon of the same day, the President and his entourage left Thailand for Vietnam, successfully concluding his official visit to the nation and attendance in the 29th APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting.