Hanoi (VNA) – Prime Minister NguyenXuan Phuc’s visit to Germany and his attendance at the G20 Summit from July 5-8is expected to showcase Vietnam as a dynamic country, and a trusted andresponsible member of the international community.

Vietnam and Germany established diplomaticties on September 23, 1975. Since then, the bilateral friendship andcooperation have developed extensively.

Mutual trust and understanding have beenstrengthened through the regular exchange of high-level delegations and cooperativemechanisms. During the Vietnam visit by Chancellor Angela Merkel in October2011, the two Government leaders signed a joint statement on establishing astrategic partnership which put forward targets and measures to intensifybilateral collaboration.

Germany is Vietnam’s largest trade partnerin Europe with two-way trade reaching 8.78 billion USD last year and 3.8billion USD in the first five months of 2017. Vietnam mainly ships mobilephones and computer components, garment and textile, footwear, coffee,agricultural and aquatic products to Germany and imports machinery, spareparts, automobiles, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and milk products from theEuropean nation.

In terms of investment, Germany considersVietnam a promising market with rapid development in Asia. As of April 20, theEuropean country had 285 projects worth 1.41 billion USD in the country,ranking fifth in the European Union and 20th among 116 nations andterritories investing in Vietnam. There are about 300 German enterprisesoperating in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Vietnam has 30 investmentprojects in Germany with total capital of 124.8 million USD, focusing onfinance-banking, automobiles, real estate, services and informatics.

Since 1990, Germany has provided some 2billion USD for Official Development Assistance projects in Vietnam throughtechnical and financial cooperation. The German Government pledged aid worth morethan 600 million EUR (682.1 million USD) for projects in energy, vocationaltraining and environment in the Southeast Asian nation.

Germany is one of the most important marketsfor the Vietnamese tourism sector. In the first three months of this year,61,923 Germans visited Vietnam, up 13.2 percent year-on-year. From July 1,Vietnam piloted visa waivers for German citizens staying for 15 days or less.

German is being taught as the second foreignlanguage in 13 schools nationwide thanks to a German Foreign Ministryinitiative.

There are currently 176,000 Vietnamesepeople living in Germany. Several States have also piloted the teaching of theVietnamese language in high schools, such as Brandenburg, Berlin, Sachsen andSachsen Anhalt.

In addition, the two countries have signedagreements to create a legal foundation for economic cooperation, including anagreement on double taxation avoidance and another on investment protection andencouragement.

Themed “Shaping an interconnected world”,the G20 Summit will be held on July 7-8 in Hamburg. As the host of the APEC2017, Vietnam was invited to conferences and meetings within the G20 frameworkthis year.-VNA