National Assembly (NA) Chairman Vương Đình Huệ hosted a reception for Chairman of the Japan-Việt Nam Parliamentary Friendship Alliance Nikai Toshihiro in Hà Nội on Friday. — VNA/VNS Photo Doãn Tấn

HÀ NỘI — National Assembly (NA) Chairman Vương Đình Huệ received Chairman of the Japan-Việt Nam Parliamentary Friendship Alliance Nikai Toshihiro in Hà Nội on Friday.

At the meeting, the top legislator expressed his delight at the sound growth of the Việt Nam-Japan relations in many fields, particularly political trust, diplomacy, economy, trade-investment, and high-level delegation exchange. Japan has maintained its position as Việt Nam's No 1 partner in economy and official development assistance (ODA), No 2 in labour, No 3 in investment and tourism, and No 4 in trade, he said.

The Vietnamese NA highly appreciates the Japanese Government's implementation of a new-generation ODA programme with Việt Nam, which will contribute to the latter’s recovery in the post-COVID-19 period, said Huệ.

For his part, Nikai highlighted the need to further strengthen cooperation between the Vietnamese and Japanese parliamentarians, especially young ones. With the COVID-19 epidemic effectively controlled and prevention and control measures relaxed, the two countries need to promote the resumption of their people-to-people exchanges, he added.

Currently, about 500,000 Vietnamese people are living, studying and working in Japan.

Nikai said that the two sides have cooperated very closely to solve problems related to Vietnamese apprentices in Japan and should sustain such cooperation in the time to come. He suggested the development of a collaboration framework to create more favourable conditions for Vietnamese agricultural apprentices in Japan.

Emphasising that the number of Vietnamese in Japan and vice versa is very large, Huệ held that it is necessary to continue to cooperate to facilitate the two expatriate communities, especially via more favourable visa policies.

The NA Chairman expressed his support for the Japanese delegation's suggestions to promote cooperation in the areas of agriculture, apprentices, high-tech industry, retail, and exchanges between parliamentary friendship groups.

He took this occasion to invite the President of the House of Councillors and Speaker of the House of Representatives of Japan to visit Việt Nam. Huệ proposed the two agencies support Việt Nam's hosting of the ninth Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Global Conference of Young Parliamentarians and send a delegation to attend the event in September.

He affirmed the Vietnamese NA is willing to coordinate in organising activities to mark the 50th founding anniversary of Việt Nam-Japan diplomatic relations this year and hopes that the two countries will have more cooperative works symbolising their ties in the new period. — VNS