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Transcript of Special Briefing on the State Visit of Prime Minister of Vietnam to India (August 01, 2024)

India - Ministry of External Affairs

August 01, 2024

Shri Randhir Jaiswal, Official Spokesperson: Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I welcome you to this Special Briefing by Secretary (East), Shri Jaideep Mazumdar on the State visit of the Prime Minister of Socialist Republic of Vietnam, His Excellency Pham Minh Chinh. We are also joined on the dais by Joint Secretary (South), who looks after Vietnam in the Ministry of External Affairs, Shri Ashish Sinha. With that, I give the floor to Secretary Sir. Sir, over to you.

Shri Jaideep Mazumdar, Secretary (East): Thank you Randhir, and a very good evening to you all. As Randhir has just prefaced, the Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has been here since the 30th evening on a State visit. When he arrived on the 30th, he was received at the airport by Minister of State for External Affairs, Shri Pabitra Margherita. Yesterday he had a series of engagements, including a business event. He had brought with him a very large business delegation. This was followed by events in the Chancery, they have a new Embassy building, which was inaugurated. And they had a community event. The main official engagements were all today.

The visit of the Prime Minister is after quite some time. He has been Prime Minister since 2021 when he was appointed. He has met our Prime Minister three times last year, actually, but this is his first visit to India and was a very important visit, which comes eight years after our Prime Minister, Prime Minister Modi, paid a very historic visit to Vietnam, when our bilateral relationship was elevated to the highest level of relationship that they have, which is the comprehensive strategic partnership. And over these eight years, both sides have been working on the agenda of our bilateral partnership; and therefore, this was an occasion to take stock of where we are and to plan the road for the future.

So earlier today, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh was accorded a ceremonial welcome at Rashtrapati Bhavan Forecourt by the Prime Minister. You have seen the visuals. It was a very grand, solemn, grand, and yet a ceremony that was full of warmth. You saw the warmth between the two Prime Ministers in that event. This was followed, in the official engagements, by restricted level talks with our Prime Minister, followed by delegation level talks, and a lunch; and the Prime Minister called on Rashtrapati ji and also Upa-Rashtrapati ji. Honorable External Affairs Minister had met him yesterday evening. So it was a full day of engagements for the Prime Minister; and he also addressed, a little while ago, the ICWA had organized in Sapru House, a strategic talk by him on strategic policy matters.

As you know, Vietnam is one of our closest partners in the ASEAN region and a pillar of our Act East policy. It is a country with which we have a long and historic and civilizational relationship, which has blossomed into many different fields, in the defence and security field, in the economic, trade and investment field, in people-to-people contacts. So all these are very bright areas of our cooperation.

Vietnam today is a rapidly growing economy, as you know; and similar to our 'Viksit Bharat 2047', they also have a 'Vietnam 2045' vision to become a developed country, a high-income developed country by 2045. And this was a common refrain today in the discussions. The Vietnamese Prime Minister referred to it several times that we have similar ambitions. Our bilateral trade is about $15 billion, although both sides do feel that this could be significantly increased, and the very large business delegation that accompanied the Prime Minister speaks to the interest that Vietnamese business has in India.

A joint statement on enhancing our Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and a Plan of Action for the implementation for the next four years, 2024-28, were the two key outcomes of the visit. In addition, we signed a number of agreements, nine in all, to further broaden and deepen our cooperation. These are in very diverse areas. You will see a list of that on the website. They cover everything from cooperation in medicinal plants to customs cooperation to radio and television programming, legal field, heritage conservation, etc. Both sides discussed common security challenges and agreed to further enhance our defence ties, which is a very important pillar of our partnership, as I have said. Two Lines of Credit agreements were signed between Vietnam's Ministry of Finance and the Export-Import Bank of India, amounting to US$300 million. This was part of the package that the Prime Minister, during his visit to Vietnam, had announced some time ago, and the actual identification of the projects that these two lines of credit will be used for has now been completed. One of them is for Coast Guard ships and the other is for fast border patrol boats.

Both the Prime Ministers witnessed the signing and exchange of the MoUs and at that time, they also virtually inaugurated the Army Software Park in the Telecommunications University in Nha Trang in Vietnam, which has been completed under an Indian grant. Vietnam also announced that it will join the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure and the early completion of procedures for joining the International Solar Alliance was also indicated.

Prime Minister reiterated that Vietnam is a critical pillar in India's 'Act East Policy' and the Indo-Pacific. The leaders spoke of the importance of the rules-based order in the region, including upholding international law, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and freedom of navigation and overflight. They reaffirmed that a peaceful, stable, secure, free, open, inclusive and rules-based region is in the common interest of all the countries.

The preservation of shared heritage was also one of the dimensions in which we cooperate with Vietnam. India has provided a technical assistance worth $2.25 million for conservation and restoration of UNESCO World Heritage Site at My Son in Quang Nam Province. ASI, the Archaeological Survey of India, has completed the restoration of three of the sites and a Letter of Intent was signed for the F Block of temples in the area of conservation of shared heritage. Also an MoU for development of the National Maritime Heritage Complex at Lothal was also signed in this context.

The Prime Minister has underscored the importance of closer people-to-people exchanges, with tourism booming between the countries, anything between 300,000 to 400,000 in number. There are as many as 56 flights a week between the two countries, which shows that the people-to-people relationship is also booming. Both sides discussed opportunities to cooperate on Global South issues where Vietnam participated in the first and the second Voice of the Global South Summits hosted by India last year. Both sides also agreed to enhance parliamentary exchanges.

The meeting between the two leaders has been highly productive, affording them an opportunity to comprehensively review the full spectrum of bilateral relations. Vietnam's unequivocal support for India's permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council was also reiterated today, as was Vietnam's support for India playing a greater role in world affairs.

In conclusion, I could say that the India-Vietnam relationship is one of civilizational friends and India as a trusted partner was reiterated again and again by the Vietnamese Prime Minister. I will now take some questions, if you have any.

Ayushi: Sir, this is Ayushi Agarwal from ANI. Good evening. Can we have more details on the discussion in defence sector, because there were reports that Vietnam is interested in acquiring the BrahMos missile, so was there any discussion upon that and also was the recent situation in the West Asia discussed between the two leaders? Thank you.

Sidhant: Sir, Sidhant from WION. How much was the situation in South China Sea discussed? We saw the Vietnamese Prime Minister making references to it while standing alongside the Prime Minister.

Huma: Sir, I am Huma Siddiqui from the Financial Express. Was the energy security discussed because India has been looking for exploration in the South China Sea?

Rishabh: Good evening Sir, Rishabh from Times Now. The Indo-China peninsula, there is a lot of stories coming in about human trafficking, be it from Lao PDR, be it from Vietnam, Thailand or Myanmar. Was this also discussed between the leaders?

Shri Jaideep Mazumdar, Secretary (East): Okay. So, I have four questions here. On the defence sector, while I will not go into specifics, within the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that we have, defence collaboration as I have said is a very important pillar; and both leaders recognize that industry collaboration is a priority. Indeed, defence industry cooperation has emerged as a very significant area as I have described to you in my initial presentation, including the defence Lines of Credit. We have signed an implementation arrangement for defence industry cooperation, which establishes a framework for such cooperation. Then we also have an overarching approach to defence supplies for Vietnam guided by their specific requirements. Technology transfers in defence production was also one of the areas identified by the Vietnamese side as an area of their interest.

Turning to the South China Sea, both sides, as I have said, discussed the importance of the South China Sea. The fact was emphasized by the Vietnamese Prime Minister that as much as 60% of global trade passes through the area and the importance of a free open waterway and sea lines was of utmost importance. Freedom of navigation and overflight is of utmost importance and that a peaceful, stable, secure, free and open and inclusive and rules-based region is something that both Vietnam and India share, as important for us as well as for others in the region.

On energy security, we have, as you know, as you rightly pointed out, we have been in the region, in Vietnam for over 35 years now, ONGC Videsh has a concession there. We operate in a block along with Vietnam and with Russia. The oil wells there have been productive for a long time. We have also now extended the concession last year and we look forward to new exploration in that region.

On the issue of scam centers that you asked about, we do not have any such instances in Vietnam, although we have in other parts of Southeast Asia. So whereas we do take this issue up in our interactions with counterparts from the countries in that region, and we have done it at the level of External Affairs Minister as well recently and whenever I also meet my counterparts, we take up these issues, but not with Vietnam, because Vietnam is not specifically involved in that.

I am sorry, I think I missed the question on West Asia. The two leaders discussed many issues, the West Asia issue did not immediately come up for discussion.

Kallol: Sir, this is Kallol Bhattacherjee from the Hindu Sir. The Vietnamese Prime Minister mentioned, Myanmar was discussed. So I wanted to know, I mean, was there a common approach discussed because he said that it's not a single country which could come up with a solution to such a problem and it required collective efforts. So could you please elaborate if there was a solution approach that was also discussed?

Shri Jaideep Mazumdar, Secretary (East): So, Myanmar, of course, is also an ASEAN country, a member of ASEAN. It's also a member of BIMSTEC. It's also a neighboring country with which we share a very long border. So, being an ASEAN member state, we did have discussions with Vietnam regarding Myanmar and the fact that both India and Vietnam support the five principles that the ASEAN have emphasized as their attitude, as their policy towards Myanmar. And both sides did talk about the importance of peace and stability in Myanmar, so in that respect.

Ayanangsha: This is Ayanangsha Maitra. Sir, if you could elaborate what the two Heads of Government discussed regarding the Global South.

Shri Jaideep Mazumdar, Secretary (East): So, Prime Minister appreciated the fact that Vietnam has been very supportive of the Global South and has attended both the events that we had last year, and hoped that Vietnam would participate in our future activities with regard to the Global South. And the Vietnamese Prime Minister assured that Vietnam would be a very willing and happy participant in all our initiatives in the Global South. As I mentioned, he indicated that Vietnam is fully supportive of India's role in world affairs and all the initiatives that we take.

Huma: Sir, I just wanted to clarify. You mentioned that we are also giving them a Line of Credit in defence, so how much is that credit?

Shri Jaideep Mazumdar, Secretary (East): There are two Lines of Credit. One is 180 million and the other is 120 million, so total of 300 million dollars.

Sudhi: Both in defence, Sir?

Shri Jaideep Mazumdar, Secretary (East): Both in defence, yes.

Shri Randhir Jaiswal, Official Spokesperson: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming for this Press engagement and look forward to seeing you tomorrow.