Party General Secretary, President Nguyễn Phú Trọng receives in Hà Nội on Wednesday the visiting Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. — VNA/VNS Photo Trí Dũng

HÀ NỘI — Party General Secretary, President Nguyễn Phú Trọng hosted a reception for visiting Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in Hà Nội on Wednesday.

Trọng welcomed the visit of the Malaysian government leader, wishing the visit a success so as to contribute to enhancing the strategic partnership between the two countries.

He reiterated Việt Nam’s consistent policy of attaching importance to the strategic partnership with Malaysia, and urged the countries to intensify co-operation in all fields, especially those with potential such as economy, trade, investment and people-to-people exchange.

The Vietnamese leader also proposed that the two countries strengthen collaboration in the framework of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and other regional and international forums for the sake of peace, stability, co-operation and development in the region and the world. 

PM Mahathir informed the host on the outcomes of his talks with Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc, noting that the two sides had affirmed the resolve to continue bolstering economic and trade links as well as to effectively co-ordinate at regional and international forums, first of all ASEAN. 

He stressed that the two countries share many similarities and both hold important roles and positions in the region, which are favourable conditions for them to co-ordinate closely in both bilateral and multilateral issues, including the East Sea issue, thus contributing to maintaining peace, stability and co-operation in the region, as well as to building a strong and united ASEAN Community. 

The Malaysian PM expressed his wish to further promote comprehensive cooperation between the two countries in all fields, and increase the exchange of delegations, particularly high-ranking ones, and people-to-people exchange for sharing experience in governance and corruption prevention and combat.

Sharing digital transformation experience

On the same day, the visiting Malaysian Prime Minister held a dialogue with leaders and staff of the FPT Group at Hòa Lạc Hi-Tech Park in Hà Nội.

Sharing Malaysia’s success in digital transformation, Mahathir said his country had built a comprehensive industry plan to catch up with the fourth industrial revolution, thus improving its global competitiveness and creating high added value. 

He said Malaysia was accelerating digital transformation with key pillars of Industry 4.0 – smart tourism, smart education and safe cities development, towards the goal of turning the country into one of the world’s leading 20 economies by 2050. 

Mahathir also spoke highly of Việt Nam’s digital transformation and e-government development goal, partly contributed by information technology groups, including FPT. 

Chairman of FPT Group’s Board of Directors Trương Gia Bình said as Việt Nam was building a national digital transformation project with the aim of being among the top four ASEAN countries in terms of national digitalisation by 2025, Malaysia’s experience would be helpful for Việt Nam. 

He said FPT would learn about the Cyberjayascience park set up by the Malaysian PM, with an aim to build an education – artificial intelligence complex in the central province of Bình Định.

Minister of Science and Technology Chu Ngọc Anh suggested Malaysia offer all possible support to Việt Nam’s technological groups to do business in the nation, adding that Viet Nam was ready to create favourable conditions for Malaysian firms. 

The Malaysian PM also took the occasion to answer FPT University students’ questions about Malaysia’s digital transformation experience, workforce 4.0 and the importance of artificial intelligence in the process.

He also met with VinGroup chairman Phạm Nhật Vượng and performed a test drive in the new Vietnamese VinFast car. For a video footage of this event please go to: https://youtu.be/d4kpmlKJHJ8. — VNS