Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on April 2 chaired a hybrid conference with Vietnamese representative agencies abroad and provinces and cities nationwide to discuss enhancing economic diplomacy and its role in Vietnam’s development in 2024 and beyond.

Addressing the event, PM Chinh highlighted investment, export and consumption as three traditional growth engines, alongside emerging sectors such as green economy, digital economy, circular and sharing economies.

The PM emphasised the need for breakthroughs in economic diplomacy this year guided by the spirit of renewed mindset, creative strategy, unanimous awareness and unified actions.

He outlined major orientations for economic diplomacy in the time ahead, one of which is to well prepare for external activities of both high-ranking officials and all-level exchanges and clearly define specific plans, projects and products with each partner.

Ministries, sectors, localities, businesses and rep. agencies should work together to renew growth drivers while promoting new ones such as digital economic, green economy, circular economy, sharing economy and knowledge-based economy, as well as new breakthrough fields like hi-tech, innovation, semi-conductor, hydrogen and AI.

The PM requested efforts to optimize potential of newly-upgraded frameworks and relations and signed FTAs, as well as the resources of more than 6 million Vietnamese overseas.

The Foreign Ministry reported on comprehensive and effective economic diplomacy efforts by ministries, agencies and localities, which have opened up new directions for cooperation and contributed significantly to Vietnam's socio-economic development.  

Economic cooperation has been made the focus of nearly 60 high-level diplomatic activities conducted by Party and State leaders since early 2023, resulted in many specific economic cooperation agreements with various partners. Notably, market access and attracting resources for new economic fields in green technology, energy transition, hi-tech agriculture, tourism, and labour have always been on the agenda of high-level exchanges with big partners in Northeast Asia, Europe, North America, and potential partners in South Asia, East Europe, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. The mobilisation of resources of overseas Vietnamese has also been promoted.

Ministries, sectors and representative offices abroad have actively supported Vietnamese localities and enterprises in participating in international events and promotional activities, and connected Vietnamese businesses with international partners to expand markets so as to draw quality foreign direct investment (FDI) and secure new-generation official development assistance (ODA).

They have also closely monitored and warned about trade defence measures used by other countries, protected the legitimate rights of Vietnamese businesses abroad, and timely provided information on the world economic situation and trends to localities and domestic enterprises.

Ministries and agencies are working closely together to carry out the 16 signed free trade agreements (FTAs), advancing negotiations on new agreements like the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the United Arab Emirates, and FTAs with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), Mercosur, among others; advocating the recognition of Vietnam's market economy status, contributing responsibly and effectively to important multilateral economic cooperation mechanisms such as the United Nations, ASEAN, APEC, Mekong, G7, G77 and WEF.

Economic diplomacy activities have contributed significantly to Vietnam's total export-import turnover of 683 billion USD in 2023, with an all-time high trade surplus of about 28 billion USD. Despite the global economic downturn, Vietnam attracted nearly 36.6 billion USD in FDI, up 32.1%, with some 23.2 billion USD disbursed, the highest level ever recorded./.