HÀ NỘI – An international conference held on Tuesday in Hà Nội offered a comprehensive analysis of the Việt Nam-Pakistan relationship over the past 50 years.

The event is a joint effort of the Việt Nam Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of Indian and Southwest Asian Studies and Pakistani Embassy in Việt Nam to celebrate the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries and the seventh anniversary of Pakistan’s Independence Day.

Dozens of speakers discussed different angles of Việt Nam-Pakistan cooperation from the past, the present and the future focusing on the commercial field.

The speakers analysed the relation between the two countries, and the key localities in building bilateral cooperation.

More and more Vietnamese tourism companies offer tours to Pakistan. Photo dulichcoguu.com

The speakers also shared the potential and challenges of Pakistan for Vietnamese enterprises and trade promotion agencies.

The delegates discussed solutions to promote further cooperation in tourism and IT between the two countries.

According to Phạm Cao Cường, Deputy Director in charge of the institute, the conference is one of the most important events this year for the institute.

“This event promotes our message of seeking ways and opportunities to develop the potential relationship between Việt Nam and Pakistan,” he said. “For many decades, the two countries have maintained a beautiful bilateral relationship and cooperation, which has made considerable contributions to developing and building Việt Nam. Though the two countries are located far away in terms of geography, there are many similarities, which have served as a thread connecting the two peoples.”

Since 1972, the relationship between the two countries has been continuously enhanced and developed in various fields.

Since January 2014, bilateral trade between the two countries has increased from US$331 million to $644 million in 2016, which is an average increase of 32 per cent.

In 2021, despite the pandemic, the export-import turnover between the two countries still reached $794 million, the highest ever in the history of trading cooperation.

In the past few years, many Vietnamese enterprises have paid attention to Pakistan and started to implement big projects in Pakistan and have gained results.

The two countries have discussed various measures to push cooperation in agriculture, forestry, sea products, transportation, producing electrical equipment, automotive production, tourism, construction and IT.

Besides bilateral cooperation, the two countries have enhanced cooperation in multilateral organizations in and outside the region.

Speakers at the conference also pointed out that there has been no cooperation in important fields such as military security, natural resources and environment, climate change, geology and minerals. In the meantime, the import-export turnover has not been equivalent to the potential and markets of the two countries. VNS