VN – Russia: Developing comprehensive strategic partnership

The two countries have now registered superior developments in their economic, trade and investment cooperation. Viet Nam is an important partner of Russia in Southeast Asia, accounting for one-third of Russia’s trade revenues with ASEAN.

Particularly, according to statistics from the Vietnamese side, since the Viet Nam-Eurasian Economic Union Free Trade Agreement came into effect in October 2016, the trade turnover between Viet Nam and Russia has grown rapidly at a rate of over 30% per year.

Two-way trade in 2018 reached approximately US$4.5 billion, the largest figure recorded so far. In the first quarter of 2019 alone, the export revenue between the two sides hit US$1.14 billion, up 12.4% compared to the same period last year.

Viet Nam’s goods, including electronics, textiles, seafood and coffee, are being increasingly used by Russian consumers. At the same time, Vietnamese consumers have become increasingly fond of machinery, equipment, technologies and consumer goods imported from Russia.

Expanding cooperation

Alongside trade exchange, investment cooperation between Viet Nam and Russia has also been expanded with many large-scale projects deployed in both countries. Of those, energy is a traditional and effective field of cooperation, which has generated a significant source of revenues for the two countries' budgets.

However, the scale of bilateral trade and investment cooperation has yet to match with the potential. Russian firms’ investment in Viet Nam remains modest at US$1 billion, while Viet Nam’s investment in Russia stands at US$3 billion. This poses significant challenges for the goal of raising two-way trade to US$10 billion by 2020.

Therefore, the two countries’ agencies and businesses concerned are making great efforts to achieve the set objectives, while drastically and actively seeking new ways of cooperation with high feasibility and benefits for both sides.

In addition, there are huge potential for bilateral cooperation in the high-tech fields, such as clean energy, information technology, electronics and telecommunications, with many projects having been proposed and implemented over recent times.

Particularly, the Government and businesses of Viet Nam and Russia have expressed their hopes that the activities taking place in the “Viet Nam Year in Russia and Russia Year in Viet Nam” will contribute to preserving the traditional friendship, which is inherently a solid foundation for the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries.

                                                                                                           By Vien Nhu