Michetti, who is also President of the Argentine Senate, said that her nation desires to step up cooperation with Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, and hailed the significant progresses in bilateral relations over recent years.
She suggested Vietnam offer more opportunities for businesses to cooperate in the areas of their strengths, including garment-textile, agriculture, culture, and people-to-people exchanges.
Deputy Minister Hai, in turn, briefed the outcomes of the mid-term session of the Vietnam-Argentina intergovernmental committee, which transpired in Buenos Aires on October 25-26.
He said this mechanism has helped advance bilateral cooperation across economics, trade and investment, agriculture, science and technology.
He called for joint effort to elevate bilateral trade to US$3.5 billion in 2017 as well as accelerate the roadmap to open markets for farm produce in 2017-2018 with a focus on facilitating procedures for Vietnamese fruit such as lychee, dragon fruits, longan and mango and Argentine fruits such as orange, blueberry, pear, apple and cherry.
The official also proposed intensifying delegation exchanges and launching trade and investment promotion activities to help firms explore business environment in the respective countries.
Vietnam will act as a gateway for Argentina to export goods to the Southeast Asian market while Argentina will help Vietnam gain entry to the Latin American market, he added.
He proposed Argentina - a founding member of the South America’s Fractious Trade Bloc (Mercosur) expedite the negotiation process and signing of a preferential trade agreement between this bloc and Vietnam.
Earlier on October 25-26, Deputy Minister Hai and Secretary for International Economic Relations of the Argentine Foreign Ministry Horacio Reyser co-chaired a meeting of the Vietnam-Argentina inter-governmental committee.
Reyser said Vietnam is a priority market in Argentina's exports strategy as well as one of the most important trade partners in Asia and the third biggest importer of Argentina.
Hai said two-way trade surpassed US$3 billion in 2016, representing a year-on-year increase of 16.7 %. In the first nine months of 2017, bilateral trade reached close to US$2.4 billion, up 15% against the same period last year.
Vietnam primarily exports footwear, garment-textile, rubber, electronic spare parts, and plastic products while importing soybeans, soybean oil, maze, wheat, cattle-feed, and pharmaceutical products from the market.
Both sides pledged to compare notes on food security and animal and plant quarantine. Argentina wants to export cherries to Vietnam while Vietnam seeks ways to ship lychees to the South American country.
During his visit to Argentina, Deputy Minister Hai also had a working session with Argentina’s Deputy Minister of Production Miguel Braun.
