kude.punny

Vietnam PM Talks Business In Singapore

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung (R) and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung sought to drum up more investment and enhance economic cooperation Monday during an official visit to Singapore.

He met with President SR Nathan and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong after arriving earlier in the day.

He is also scheduled to call on Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, the city-state's founding father, during his two-day visit.

Dung encouraged more than 200 top executives to leverage the "Singapore-Vietnam advantage" in a speech to business executives at a networking session.

Vietnam would speed up the pace of reform and make transactions more transparent, he promised them.

“The government of Vietnam would like to affirm that we will seriously implement our commitments to the international community,” he said.

By capitalizing on the comparative advantages of each country, Singapore and Vietnam could offer a more comprehensive and compelling business proposition to investors, he said.

He noted that Vietnam has a young population and large work force and should be a “fundamentally industrialized country” by 2020.

Noting Vietnam was steadily gaining international recognition, Singapore’s Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang said it had attracted a record amount of foreign direct investment of US$10.2 billion last year and was "poised to do even better in 2007."

Vietnam was becoming "a destination of choice for investors from Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Korea, the EU, and the US," he added.

Singapore was interested in larger and more ambitious projects such as townships and infrastructure, he said.

It was Vietnam's fourth-largest trading partner, trailing only China, Japan, and the US, he said.

Bilateral trade in the first half was worth $4.16 billion, more than 6 percent higher compared with the same period last year.

Vietnam's total trade with the rest of the world stands at US$85 billion, rising by 20 percent annually for the last 20 years.

Deals inked

After their meeting, Dung and Loong witnessed the signing of agreements by 10 companies from six countries and territories with the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP), built by Vietnam and Singapore.

At the networking session, the Vietnamese Ministry of Trade issued a license to Singapore’s Great Eastern life insurance group.

Several business contracts worth almost $1 billion in all were also signed at the session, including a $700 million loan deal between Credit Suisse and Vietnam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines), and a $100 million deal between Saigon Tourist Company and Singapore’s Golden Travel Company.

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