A few days ago, Vietnamese Minister of Industry and Trade Chen Junying held a working meeting with Ni Yuefeng, director of the General Administration of Customs of China, to hold talks on strengthening bilateral trade and promoting balanced and sustainable bilateral trade relations.
The two sides agreed that under the attention and guidance of senior leaders of the two countries, Sino-Vietnamese economic and trade cooperation has developed rapidly and achieved fruitful results in recent years.
The meeting pointed out that Vietnam's trade deficit with China has been declining, but it has not yet reached a sustainable level, so more effective measures are needed to reduce the trade deficit.
The two sides affirmed the important role of bilateral cooperation in promoting trade in agricultural products and agreed to continue to provide convenient conditions for trade in agricultural products for some time to come.
At the same time, the two sides agreed to cooperate closely to implement the recently signed Protocol on opening up the Chinese Market to Vietnamese Dairy products and mangosteen.
The General Administration of Customs of China will work closely with Vietnam to continue the risk assessment of Vietnamese durian, passion fruit (passionflower), avocado (avocado), grapefruit, coconut, Sakya fruit (Annona), lotus fog, sweet potato, bird's nest and other products.
China is an important export market for Vietnamese rice, and the two sides agreed to continue to take appropriate management measures to ensure the quality of rice exports and stabilize rice exports.
China and Vietnam will assign relevant departments to draft a memorandum of understanding on cooperation and establish a mechanism for promoting bilateral trade relations as soon as possible.
According to Vietnamese customs statistics, in 2018, the trade volume between China and Vietnam reached 106.7 billion US dollars, an increase of 13.5% over the same period last year. Vietnam's exports to China totaled US $41.26 billion and imports totaled US $65.43 billion.