Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and his wife arrive in Japan on December 12. Photo: VNA

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung arrived in Tokyo in the evening of December 12 (local time), beginning his four-day official visit to Japan to attend the ASEAN-Japan Commemorative Summit and the Mekong-Japan Summit.

Welcoming PM Dung at the airport were Japanese Ambassador to Vietnam Hiroshi Fukada, Vietnamese Ambassador to Japan Doan Xuan Hung and the Vietnamese community in the country.

The visit, made at the invitation of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, takes place on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Vietnam-Japan diplomatic ties, aiming to enhancing and deepening the strategic partnership between the two countries, especially in economics, investment, development assistance, as well as their coordination at regional and international forums.

Over the past years, the Vietnam-Japan strategic partnership has seen in-depth and concrete development, in which economics is one of the bright spots in their bilateral ties.

Japan is one of Vietnam’s leading important economic partners and the first in the group of most industrialized nations (G7) to recognise its full market economy status (October 2011).

Two-way trade in 2012 hit 24.7 billion USD and 22.9 billion USD during January-November this year. The two sides set a target of at least doubling their trade turnover by 2020.

Japan remains the leading ODA donor to Vietnam and ranks first among 101 countries and territories investing in the country.

The two countries have also built an efficient partnership in a wide range of areas including labour, culture-information, education-training, science-technology and tourism.

Within the framework of his visit to Japan , PM Nguyen Tan Dung will attend the summit marking the 40th anniversary of ASEAN-Japan dialogue relations.

On the edge of the summit, the fifth Mekong-Japan Summit will be chaired by PM Shinzo Abe and attended by leaders of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

On December 13, the Vietnamese Government leader will meet Japan’s leading businesses and associations operating on economic and scientific-technological fields.

VNA