(VOVWORLD) - Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Friday morning hosted a welcome ceremony for Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Petr Fiala, who began a 2-day official visit to Vietnam on Thursday.
 PM Pham Minh Chinh meets with Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala on the sidelines of the ASEAN-EU Summit in Brussels, Belgium, on December 14, 2022. (Photo: VNA) |
This is the first trip to Asia by Fiala since he took office at the end of 2021, and the first by a head of the Czech Government to Vietnam in 15 years. Vietnam and the Czech Republic established diplomatic ties in 1950. Since then, the Czech Republic has followed a policy of steadily developing cooperative relations with Vietnam in all fields.
14 cooperation agreements have been signed. Two-way trade reached 848 million USD in 2022, up 15%. The Czech Republic currently has 41 FDI projects in Vietnam worth 92 million USD, mainly in processing, manufacturing, and mining. It was the first Eastern European country to provide ODA to Vietnam, about 20 million USD so far.
Nearly 100,000 Vietnamese people are living in the Czech Republic. In 2013, the Czech Government added Vietnamese-Czech people to its Council of Ethnic Minorities, recognising Vietnamese-Czech people as an a separate minority in the country.
PM Fiala will witness the signing of bilateral cooperation pacts, pay a courtesy call to President Vo Van Thuong, and attend a Vietnam-Czech Republic business forum with Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.