Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Salvador Lamothe will pay an official visit to Vietnam from December 16–18 at the invitation of his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Tan Dung.

Vietnam established diplomatic ties with the Caribbean island nation in 1997.

Due to their relative geographical isolation, bilateral relations between the two nations are still far from realising their full potential.

Two-way trade turnover stood at only US$40 million last year, though still an improvement on 2010’s US$11 million. Vietnam’s Haitain export and import value hit US$15 million and US$25 million. In the first half of this year, bilateral trade jumped to US$19 million.

Vietnam’s primary Haitian imports are clothing and leather materials, paper pulp, waste iron & steel, and animal feed. Its main export commodities include garments and textiles, rattan products, wooden furniture, instant noodles, chemicals, and plastics.

In 2010, Viettel (the military-run telecom group) and Haiti’s Telecom International Teleco S.A established joint venture known as NATCOM S.A. It has a total capitalisation valued at US$100 million, of which 60 percent came from Viettel.

From its September 2011 operations to September this year, NATCOM has secured 20 percent of Haiti’s mobile phone market.

Around 220 Vietnamese people are currently living in Haiti.

Haiti is a member of the United Nations, the Organisation of American States (OAS), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) as well as other organisations such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the International Labour Organization (ILO), and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In December 2009, Haiti joined the economic partnership agreement between 14 Caribbean states and the European Union (EU).

VOV