MOSCOW, September 28. /TASS/: Russia and Vietnam have expressed the mutual intention to enhance strategic partnership, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference following talks with his Vietnamese counterpart Bui Thanh Son on Tuesday.
"We confirmed the mutual intention to systematically strengthen comprehensive strategic partnership between our countries, based on years-long traditions of friendship, solidarity and mutual support," he said. "We hailed the regular, meaningful political dialogue at the summit and high levels, which is continuing in defiance of the coronavirus pandemic."
In discussing trading and economic ties the sides expressed the unanimity that the EAEU's free trade agreement with Vietnam considerably promoted an increase in bilateral trade turnover.
"Last year it was up 15% and in January-July this year, by another 24%. Alongside this we considered the opportunities for correcting the imbalance in mutual trade by various ways, including greater presence of Russian exporters on the Vietnamese market," Lavrov said.
He stressed that high on the list of Russia's and Vietnam's priorities was the implementation of large-scale initiatives in the field of industrial production, infrastructures and transport.
"We considered the outlook for pooling efforts in such fields as information security, creation of an electronic government and smart cities, banking, agri-industrial sphere and communications," Lavrov said.
He stressed that at the negotiations a high assessment was made of the state of affairs in the oil and gas sector.
"It was decided to create favorable conditions for the effective operation of Gazprom, Zarubezhneft and Novatek in Vietnam and PetroVietnam in Russia," Lavrov added.
