Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh meets Swiss President in Davos

The talks were held on the sidelines of the 55th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting.

Pham congratulated Keller-Sutter on her appointment as the President of Switzerland, expressing his confidence that the President would have a successful term, contributing to strengthening and elevating the bilateral relationship between the two countries.

Viet Nam always attaches importance to the friendly relations and multifaceted cooperation with Switzerland, reiterated Pham.

He hailed Switzerland's plan to continue supporting Viet Nam in the field of development cooperation for the 2025-2028 period.

Pham suggested that both sides step up cooperation in such areas as education and training, science and technology, and culture and tourism, especially in building a high-quality education system; connectivity between their educational institutions, research institutes, and universities; and foster collaboration in sustainable tourism and human resource development in tourism sector.

Keller-Sutter, for her part, asserted that the Swiss government considers Viet Nam an important partner in the region and expects to lift the bilateral relationship to a new height, characterized by political trust and comprehensive, and effective cooperation across various fields.

Switzerland stands ready to expand cooperation with Viet Nam in new areas of innovation, digital transformation, high technology, AI, semiconductors, climate change response, carbon credit trading, experience sharing, and supporting the establishment of an international financial center in Ho Chi Minh City, she emphasized.

The President expressed thanks to Viet Nam for its decision to grant short-term visa exemptions for Swiss citizens in 2025 to strengthen people-to-people exchanges and mutual understanding between the two countries.

The host highly appreciated the positive contributions of the Vietnamese community in Switzerland to the local economy and society, highlighting their bridging role in bolstering cooperation between the two nations.

The two leaders held that the Viet Nam-Switzerland relationship has progressed positively across various fields, remarkably in politics-diplomacy, trade-investment, development cooperation, science and technology, and education and training.

They agreed that it is an ideal time to elevate the Viet Nam-Switzerland relationship to a comprehensive partnership in order to further deepen the bilateral ties in a deeper, more comprehensive, and more substantive manner.

Both sides hailed the economic cooperation prospects in the bilateral ties and vowed to work together to further increase bilateral trade turnover in the coming period.

The two sides placed high priority on concluding negotiations for the Free Trade Agreement between Viet Nam and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), as well as restarting negotiations for the bilateral investment promotion and protection agreement to pave the way for economic exchanges and encourage long-term investment by businesses in both countries.

They underscored the importance of promoting security and defense cooperation, including defense industry, training, capacity building, and participation in peacekeeping forces; exploring the possibility of signing defense and security cooperation agreements.

The host and the guest pledged to strengthen collaboration in addressing global challenges, and support each other at multilateral forums, particularly the United Nations and within the framework of the ASEAN-Switzerland Dialogue Partnership.

Both leaders witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation between the two Ministries of Foreign Affairs./.