Singapore - Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung sought to drum up more investment and enhance economic cooperation Monday during his first official visit to Singapore as premier. The Vietnamese leader met with President SR Nathan and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Calls on Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, the city-state's founding father, were also scheduled.
Dung encouraged more than 200 top executives to leverage the "Singapore-Vietnam advantage" during a networking session.
By capitalizing on the comparative advantages of each country, Singapore and Vietnam can offer a more comprehensive and compelling business proposition to investors, he said.
Noting Vietnam is steadily gaining international recognition, Singapore Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang noted it attracted a record level of foreign direct investment of 10.2 billion US dollars in 2006 and is "poised to do even better in 2007."
Vietnam is becoming "a destination of choice for investors from Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Korea, the European Union and the United States," he added.
Accompanied by a high-level delegation of ministers and senior government officials, Dung plans to visit other members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Indonesia, the Philippines and Brunei after his two-day visit to Singapore.
Singapore is Vietnam's fourth-largest trading partner, trailing only China, Japan and the United States. The city-state is the biggest investor in Vietnam among ASEAN's 10 members.
Bilateral trade in the first half of 2007 reached 6.33 billion Singapore dollars (4.16 billion US dollars), an increase of more than 6 per cent compared with the same period last year.
Vietnam's economy has been growing at an average rate of 7 per cent since 2000.
Lim said Singapore is interested in larger and more ambitious projects such as townships and infrastructure.
