Indian President Pranab Mukherjee will pay a state visit to Vietnam fromSeptember 14-17 to further strengthen the country’s traditionalcooperation and strategic partnership with Vietnam.

Since the two countries established diplomatic ties in 1972 and astrategic partnership in 2007, the Vietnam-India relationship hasdeveloped intensively, reflected by the increase in high-level visits.

Since taking office in May 2014, the Government of the Indian People’sParty (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has strongly promotedIndia’s “Look East” policy, in which Vietnam is regarded a “pillar”.

Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj’s visit to Vietnam on August25-26 added a new driving force to the partnership between the twonations.

Vietnam-India relations have been developingsuccessfully, built on the five pillars of politics, economy,security-defence, science-technology, and culture-education.

Economic cooperation is a shining example of the booming relationship,with bilateral trade estimated to reach 8 billion USD this year,compared to 3.4 billion USD in 2010. The two sides are striving toincrease trade value to 10 billion USD by 2015 and 15 billion USD by2020.

As many as 68 Indian-invested projects worthapproximately 1 billion USD have been put into operation in Vietnam sofar, mainly focusing on oil and gas exploration, mineral exploitationand processing, sugar production, agricultural chemicals, informationtechnology (IT) and food processing.

Meanwhile, Vietnamese companies have invested in a total of three projects in India worth 23.6 million USD.

IT is now an important focal point in the knowledge-based partnershipbetween the two countries. India helped Vietnam set up IT and Englishtraining centres as well as business development institutes.

Thanks to India’s support, Vietnam’s rice research institute wasestablished, paving the way for Vietnam to become the world’s leadingrice exporter.

India granted hundreds of scholarships toVietnamese students each year under the Indian Technological andEconomic Cooperation (ITEC) Programme.

Defence collaborationbetween the two countries has developed strongly in recent years, withthe establishment of a deputy defence minister-level strategic dialogueand the acceleration of joint naval exercises.

The twosides have closely cooperated with each other at regional andinternational forums, including the Association of Southeast AsianNations (ASEAN), the East Asia Summit (EAS), the Mekong-GangaCooperation (MGC) and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM).-VNA