VN, Cambodia agree to strengthen cooperation across spheres

Photo by VGP

Deputy PM and FM Pham Binh Minh and Prak Sokhonn, Senior Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Cambodia, co-chaired the 16th meeting of the Vietnam-Cambodia Joint Commission on Economic, Cultural, Scientific and Technology Cooperation in Hanoi on May 17.

Addressing the event, Deputy PM, FM Minh and Minister Prak Sokhonn agreed that the Vietnam-Cambodia relations have been constantly growing and have achieved new encouraging results since the 15th meeting in March 2017.

Especially, the two countries organized many meaningful activities in the 2017 Friendship Year to mark 50 years of their diplomatic relations. The border demarcation, landmark planting, and border management work has improved significantly. On the basis of the treaties and agreements reached by the two sides’ senior leaders, the functional agencies, authorities and people of the two countries’ border localities are actively coordinating in implementing land border demarcation and landmark planting.

With regards to economic relations, two-way trade between Vietnam and Cambodia reached approximately US$3.8 billion in 2017, up 25% compared to 2016. Viet Nam is currently one of the top five investors in Cambodia, with 196 investment projects totally worth US$2.94 billion.

Both sides also agreed to continue enhancing cooperation in the areas of security-defence, transport infrastructure development, industry-mining-energy, agro-forestry and fisheries, information and communication, healthcare, labor, social and religious issues, culture-sports-tourism, and environment. Cooperation between the two countries’ localities and within the framework of the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Development Triangle will also be accelerated.

The two sides pledged to deal with border issues and manager the border areas in line with the signed bilateral treaties and agreements, while agreeing to implement the mid-term review mechanism to ensure the effective enforcement of the reached agreements, thus contributing actively to strengthening the friendly relations between the two nations.

Concluding the meeting, the two sides signed the minutes of the meeting. Accordingly, the 17th meeting of the Joint Commission will take place in Cambodia in 2019.