8:59:12 AM | 9/20/2023
At the 43rd ASEAN Summit in Indonesia, the Vietnamese delegation led by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh made many important contributions to the success of the summit, which was highly appreciated by international friends.
Active contributions to maintaining ASEAN's stature and epicenter of growth
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh gave important speeches at all conferences, sent many messages, approaches and substantive initiatives to ASEAN and its partners to reinforce the process of building the ASEAN community and strengthening relations with partners.
Regarding the position, role, and importance of ASEAN in the new context, PM Chinh stated that ASEAN must prove itself “as a pole in the multipolar world”, as a center of cooperation and regional structure. ASEAN is fully capable of undertaking this mission.
To maintain ASEAN’s stature and role as the epicenter of growth, PM Pham Minh Chinh stressed the need for ASEAN to strengthen its self-reliance by stepping up economic connectivity, expanding the intra-bloc market, and facilitating trade and investment flows. ASEAN countries need to remove bottlenecks and barriers in policies and institutions, maintain stable intra-bloc supply chains, and improve the region's resilience to external impacts and challenges. Besides, strengthening ASEAN's role is a key content of the Free Trade Agreements network by reviewing, upgrading and negotiating new FTAs between ASEAN and its partners, and to create new development momentum for the regional economy.
ASEAN needs to determine that ensuring regional peace, security and stability is the responsibility of ASEAN. In particular, in the face of the spiral of fierce strategic competition between major countries, the trended fragmentation and grouping of forces is increasingly evident, forcing countries to face extremely difficult strategic choices. PM Chinh emphasized that, to maintain its centrality, the only answer is to promote its own strength and strengthen internal solidarity to affirm its strategic values. ASEAN countries must uphold the spirit of solidarity, independence and self-reliance in both words and actions; respect the law and be consistent with the basic conduct principles and standards of ASEAN.
The Prime Minister also emphasized that, in the midst of fierce competition, ASEAN needs to maintain strategic balance with major countries.
The Prime Minister also emphasized the message of essentially adhering to the all-people approach with the core spirit of "the people are the center, subject, goal, resource and driving force" of development and the process of ASEAN construction. He also stressed on the direction of equitable and sustainable development, especially in remote and sub-regional areas; no sacrifice of justice, social progress and environmental protection in exchange for simple economic growth.
He announced that Vietnam will host the ASEAN Future Forum on rapid, sustainable, people-centered development to complement ASEAN's official forums and mechanisms, thus providing an opportunity for the exchange of ideas and initiatives for regional cooperation while contributing to building a resilient and sustainable ASEAN Community.
To enhance cooperation between ASEAN and its partners, PM Chinh proposed focusing on fostering trade and investment, connecting businesses, stabilizing supply chains and supporting each other's market access. He hoped that partners will further support and facilitate goods of Vietnam and ASEAN countries.
Towards a sustainable future, the Prime Minister asked ASEAN and its partners to foster cooperation in emerging fields such as digital transformation, digital economy, e-commerce, energy transformation, green finance and green industry to create more impetus for inclusive growth, towards sustainable development to bring practical benefits to the people. In addition, he asked partners to make more effective contributions to sustainable development in the Mekong sub-region.
As a trusted partner and active and responsible member, Vietnam will continue to coordinate closely with Indonesia and other ASEAN countries in efforts to build a united, unified, resilient and developed ASEAN, continue to promote multilateral cooperation and international solidarity to further maintain an environment of peace, stability, cooperation and common development in the region and the world.
Countries hope the ASEAN - Australia High-Level Dialogue on Climate Change and Energy Transition, co-chaired by Australia, Vietnam and Laos later this year in Hanoi, will make practical contributions to green transformation efforts towards sustainable development.
Fostering more comprehensive, substantive and effective relationships with partners
On this occasion, in the spirit of sincerity, trust and responsibility, in an open atmosphere, with frank discussions on major regional and international issues, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh had nearly 20 meetings and contacts with leaders of countries and international organizations attending the summit, thus strengthening Vietnam’s relationship with its partners, making political - diplomatic cooperation, economic - trade - investment cooperation, security - defense cooperation, culture - education cooperation, and people-to-people exchanges deeper, more substantive and more effective.
In addition, the Prime Minister and leaders of other countries and international organizations also agreed to bolster cooperation in new fields such as innovation, digital transformation, green transformation, circular economy, sharing economy, renewable energy and sustainable development, forge close and effective coordination and capture all opportunities to carry out multilateral agreements, including free trade agreements.
Notably, while food security, especially rice supply shortage, is a concern of many countries in the region, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh affirmed that Vietnam is ready to support countries to ensure stable supply and help enhance food security globally. He proposed and many leaders agreed that it is necessary to negotiate and sign agreements on trade cooperation on rice to ensure food security goals.
The partners all highly appreciated the socioeconomic development and administration of the Vietnamese government in the past time. They also increasingly appreciate Vietnam's dynamic role and positive contributions in ASEAN and the region. Leaders of many countries expressed their desire to visit Vietnam soon and upgrade and elevate bilateral relations in the coming time.
Governments and businesses need closer, more effective and substantive cooperation
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh also received leaders of Indonesian companies and delivered a keynote speech to the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit - the largest annual business forum in Southeast Asia - attended by more than 2,000 ASEAN and international business representatives and more than 100 international speakers, including leaders of many ASEAN countries and partner countries.
Businesses all see Vietnam as a large, potential and attractive market for them to do business and sell quality products. For his part, PM Chinh affirmed that Vietnam always creates the most favorable conditions for investors with the spirit that the success of investors is the success of Vietnam, “interests are harmonized, risks are shared.”
To further promote the business role in boosting growth and creating new breakthroughs for ASEAN, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said that governments and businesses need closer, more effective and more substantive cooperation to: (1) work together to improve institutions; (2) join hands to develop strategic infrastructure and economic connections; (3) build high-quality human resources, promote innovation, and foster human resources.
The above issues need to be coordinated at all three levels: Among governments and to harmonize policies, among businesses to synchronize implementation, and between governments and businesses to strengthen public - private, trust and consensus.
The Prime Minister hoped that businesses must take the lead in innovation, increase labor productivity and harmoniously combine production, business and research and development; comply with the law, improve business capacity and ethics, build a healthy, equal, and sustainable business environment; promote the role and responsibility to the community and society, especially in remote areas, border areas, and islands so that no one is left behind; develop business culture and foster cultural development along with economy and society, and help build a distinctive ASEAN culture; unite, share, and support with the spirit of “I have you, you have me”.
Source: Vietnam Business Forum
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