Sri Lanka President to Pay Official Visit to Vietnam

President of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapaksa will visit Vietnam next year at the invitation of Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Minh Triet.

 

The president accepted the invitation when Vietnamese Ambassador to Sri Lanka Vu Quang Diem presented credentials to him, and at the same time affirmed that Vietnam and Sri Lanka have potential for cooperation in the fields of economics, trade, culture, tourism and education.

 

Mahinda Rajapaksa told Diem that Vietnam is an example for developing countries like Sri Lanka to learn from its experience. He highly appreciated Vietnam’s achievements in recent years.

 

In November this year Sri Lanka Prime Minister Honourable Ratnasiri visited Vietnam, the first visit by the head of Sri Lankan government and the first high-level visit between the two countries in the past thirty years.

 

During the visit the two sides reached a cooperative agreement on the agricultural field and set a target of obtaining bilateral trade of US$100 million in 2010. Sri Lanka is an agricultural nation competitive in tea, rubber, and coconut

 

The two-way trade between Vietnam and Sri Lanka remains modest, reaching US$30.3 million last year and maybe US$40 million this year. Vietnam mainly exports precious stone, cloth, rubber, seafood, handicraft, fine arts, and wooden products, and imports cattle feed, footwear, garment and textile materials, plastic, and chemical substances. Capital Security