After concluding negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA), Vietnam and RoK set a target of a two-way trade turnover to reach 70 billion dollars by 2020.

The visit to the Republic of Korea (RoK) by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung from December 10-12, 2014 was of great significance in fostering mutual trust in terms of politics and promoting bilateral cooperation, especially in economics.

During the visit, the Prime Minister had talks with RoK President Park Geun-hye, received the Mayor of Busan Suh Byung-soo, visited the Busan-Chinhae Free Economic Zone , chaired a dialogue with RoK Businessmen and received many South Korean groups and some Vietnam-RoK Friendship Organisations.

During the talks with RoK President Park Geun-hye, the two sides discussed and reached a high consensus on major orientations and concrete measures to promote and deepen the Vietnam-RoK strategic partnership in the near future; maintain regular high level visits and contact; expand coordination between the two countries’ ministries, agencies and localities; and effectively implement the dialogue and cooperation mechanism in the fields of diplomacy, national defence and security.

President Park Geun-hye, for her part, reiterated that the RoK considers Vietnam as the number one partner in its policy of official development assistance (ODA), pledging priority to infrastructure, green growth and human resource projects.

South Korean businesses also paid much attention to and desired to expand their investment and trade in Vietnam and hoping that the Vietnamese Government would improve the investment environment and develop the infrastructure.

The two sides also affirmed to closely coordinate to ensure the legitimate rights of people of each country in the other country in the context that the number of Vietnamese living in RoK and vice versa will increase to 130,000.

On this occasion, the two countries officially declared the conclusion of negotiations for the Vietnam-RoK Free Trade Agreement that is one of the visit’s outstanding results and has a great significance for relations between the two countries.

The FTA will promote bilateral economic cooperation, increase the two way trade volume to 70 billion dollars by 2020 and create favourable conditions for Vietnamese goods, such as agricultural products, seafood, garments and textiles to have better competitiveness in RoK.

The FTA also promotes investment of South Korean businesses in Vietnam, encourage the transfer of technology to improve production qualifications and capacity and create an impetus and new opportunities for bilateral economic cooperation, making a contribution to raising the strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries to new heights.

Recently Vietnam completed negotiations for three free trade agreements with the world’s leading economies, including the EU with 28 nations in October, the RoK and the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia in mid-November.

With three bilateral free trade agreements slated for signing in early 2015, Vietnam’s export turnover in particular and its economy in general are expected to see a robust growth.