Minister of State Greg Hands of the UK Department for International Trade (L) meets with Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Quoc Khanh on February 1. Photo: British Embassy in Vietnam

UK Minister of State The Rt Hon Greg Hands of the Department for International Trade arrived in Hanoi on February 1 for high level trade talks on how UK joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) will boost the economic firepower of the world’s most dynamic trade bloc.

As a founding CPTPP member country, Vietnam is the first leg of the UK Minister’s 3-day Asia-Pacific visit, which will also include Malaysia and Singapore, according to the British Embassy.

In Hanoi, Minister Hands met with Vice Minister of Industry and Trade, Tran Quoc Khanh. With the next round of CPTPP negotiations upcoming, the Minister expressed the UK’s desire to finalise accession at the earliest opportunity. It was also an opportunity to mark 50 years of UK-Vietnam diplomatic relations and discuss the thriving bilateral trade relationship which has increased 12.4% over the last year and is valued at GBP 5.9 billion.

Speaking of his visit, Minister Greg Hands said “Joining CPTPP will add even more economic firepower to this exciting and dynamic trade alliance, adding GBP 2 trillion to CPTPP’s GDP. This visit will strengthen our bilateral relationships with Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore – fast-growing economies who, between them, do GBP 30billion worth of trade with the UK every year and represent huge opportunities for our life sciences and technology sectors.”

UK Minister of State The Rt Hon Greg Hands had talks with Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Phung Duc Tien. Source: Nong nghiep (Agriculture) newspaper

It was also an opportunity to mark the 50th anniversary of the UK - Vietnam diplomatic relations and discuss the thriving bilateral trade relationship, which has increased 12.4% over the last year and is valued at GBP 5.9 billion (USD 7.3 billion), the embassy noted.

During his visit in Hanoi, Minister Hands also had talks with Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Phung Duc Tien. Both sides celebrated the growing partnership in the agri-food trade and broad agricultural cooperation, building on the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two countries’ agricultural ministries last year.

Tien also made a number of proposals for UK support in a number of areas such as technology transfer; training and raising resources, especially in the field of high technology; forestry; climate change; farming production; high-yield and high-quality livestock and plant varieties; rice export and import quotas raising for Vietnam.

Vietnam and UK established diplomatic ties on September 11, 1973. Over the past 50 years, the two countries have built and developed a strong cooperative relationship in various fields. The areas of cooperation include politics & diplomacy, global and regional issues, trade-investment, development cooperation, sustainable socio-economic development, education & training, security-defense and people-to-people exchanges.

Around 15,000 Vietnamese students are currently studying in the UK with many more students applying to study in the UK. People-to-people diplomacy has been pushed up across a range of sectors.

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