President Truong Tan Sang wrapped up his State visit to Tanzania on March 11 after reaching dozens of agreements to elevate the two countries’ wide-ranging cooperation.

President Truong Tan Sang meets with Tanzanian counterpart John Magufuli

A joint communiqué on the March 8-11 visit said Presidents Truong Tan Sang and John Magufuli shared their strong beliefs that their countries’ relationship, built on a solid foundation created by Presidents Ho Chi Minh and Julius Nyerere, will advance robustly in all fields. They said they considered it a strategic goal in a mutually beneficial partnership.

The leaders expressed their desires to broaden the existing relations and seek new cooperation opportunities in trade, investment, education, science and technology, food processing, animal feed production, aquaculture, footwear and apparel, farming machinery, cement manufacturing, the building of low-cost houses and petro-chemistry.

Agreeing to deepen the two countries’ ties in the coming time, they underscored the need to foster comprehensive cooperation, along with maintaining and increasing exchanges between their people.

According to the communiqué, the two sides must raise bilateral trade to 1 billion USD by 2020. They pledged to do more to push for the signing of an agreement on the avoidance of double taxation and another on investment promotion and protection.

They backed the operations of Vietnamese enterprises, like the military-run telecom group Viettel, PetroVietnam and Hapro in Tanzania, while stressing the important role played by the Vietnam-Tanzania Joint Committee, which was set up in 2004 and will convene its second meeting in 2016.

The countries renewed their commitments to promoting peace and security globally and regionally in compliance with the UN Charter and international law, continuing to work together to defend basic principles of international law – especially pertaining to the handling of disputes by peaceful measures.

Before leaving Dar Es Salaam the same day for Mozambique, President Truong Tan Sang received Agriculture Minister Christopher Chiza and several businesspeople, who asked for Vietnam ’s support for partnerships in breeding, plantation and post-harvest processing.

VNA