Indian Prime Minister has offered Vietnam a credit line of $500 million dollars for facilitating deeper defense cooperation.
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“We have agreed to scale up and strengthen our bilateral engagement”.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the announcement during a visit to Hanoi, which has gone on a spending spree in recent years to expand and modernise its military arsenal amid territorial disputes with Beijing in the strategically vital waterway.
India and Vietnam will expand and deepen cooperation in key areas of defence, security and trade, oil exploration, solar energy and some other sectors after leaders of the two countries meet today in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi to hold bilateral talks.
Agreements were also signed on double taxation avoidance and celebrating 2017 as the “Year of Friendship” to mark 45 years of India-Vietnam diplomatic ties. He will then head to Laos for a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and will attend an ASEAN-India Summit on September 8.
India had already signed an agreement to build offshore patrol boats for Vietnam, as part of the steps to give concrete shape to bilateral defence engagement.
Both leaders said ties would be upgraded to the level of “comprehensive strategic relationship” and bilateral trade would be nearly doubled to $15 billion by 2020.
Vietnam had earlier Comprehensive Strategic Partnership only with Russian Federation and China. “Our partnership will strengthen peace, development and security in the region”, President Quang told Modi.
The Indian side expressed its commitment to capacity building and training to enable Vietnam’s participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations, it said. I would like to reiterate late Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong’s words that the India – Vietnam relationship is “as pure as a cloudless sky”.
Modi announced a grant of $5 million for the construction of an Army Software Park at the Telecommunications University in Nha Trang. “And, I have invited Vietnamese companies to take advantage of the various schemes and flagship programmes of my government”.
Noting that India is a major country with unique and age old civilisation and culture, he said Vietnamese people had never forgotten India’s strong support during Vietnam’s struggle for independence, sources said.
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“The Archaeological Survey of India can soon start the conservation and restoration work of the Cham monuments at My So’n”, he said.
