President begins visits to Italy

During the Italy visit, President Vo is expected to hold talks with his counterpart Sergio Mattarella and meet with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, President of the Senate Ignazio La Russa, and President of the Chamber of Deputies Lorenzo Fontana, among others.

He will attend a concert celebrating the 50th founding anniversary of the two countries' diplomatic ties and meet representatives of the Vietnamese community in the European country.

The State visit by President Vo Van Thuong to Italy is the first by the State leader to a G7 member which is a strategic partner of Viet Nam.

Viet Nam and Italy established diplomatic relations on March 23, 1973 and they lifted their ties to a strategic partnership in January, 2013. 

The relationship is flourishing across sectors and in both bilateral and multilateral aspects.

The two sides have actively promoted their substantial and effective cooperation in all fields, from politics, diplomacy, and economy, to science, education, defense-security, environmental protection, and locality-to-locality collaboration.

They have maintained many efficient bilateral cooperation mechanisms such as the annual strategic dialogue at the deputy foreign ministerial level and the defense policy dialogue at the deputy ministerial level, as well as the Joint Committee on Economic Cooperation and Joint Committee on Science and Technology Cooperation.

Two-way trade grew 21 percent to US$ 5.6 billion in 2021, and 11 percent to US$ 6.2 billion in 2022. The figure hit US$ 3.1 billion in the first half of this year.

Viet Nam has become the largest trade partner of Italy among the ASEAN countries, while Italy is the third biggest partner of Viet Nam among the EU members.

As of June 2023, Italy had run 147 valid projects worth US$ 472.83 million in Viet Nam, ranking 36 out of the 141 countries and territories investing in the country./.