Rio de Janeiro (VNA) - Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh held talks with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Rio de Janeiro at noon on July 5 (local time), as part of his working trip to Brazil to attend the expanded ཧBRICS summit and bilateral activities.

PM Chinh expressed his joy at meeting President Lula da Silva for the 5th time, a close and beloved friend of Vietnam and its people. He thanked the Brazilian Government for giving the delegation a warm, sincere welcome, imbued with the spirit of friendship between the two nations, although half a world apart, but with the same aspiration for independence, development and advancement. The PM conveyed to President Lula da Silva and Brazilian leaders the sincere and affectionate greetings from Party General Secretary To Lam, State President Luong Cuong and National Assembly Chairman Tran Thanh Man and affirmed that the President's visit to Vietnam four months ago was a beautiful memory and left a deep impression on the leaders and people of Vietnam. He highly appreciated Brazil's growing role in promoting global agendas, believing that Brazil will continue to further promote its role in important multilateral mechanisms when holding the role of G20 Chair in 2024 and Chair of BRICS, COP30 and Mercosur in 2025.

Welcoming PM Chinh and the high-ranking Vietnamese delegation to attend the BRICS summit for the first time as a partner country, President Lula da Silva said that as the host, Brazil wants to further promote the voice of Southern countries in global governance mechanisms, focusing on sustainable and inclusive development in economy, society and environment. He highly appreciated Vietnam's role and responsible contributions to solving global issues. PM Chinh thanked Brazil for supporting Vietnam to become a BRICS partner country, affirming that Vietnam will participate in the summit with the highest responsibility. He asserted Vietnam's strong commitment and active contributions to the common efforts to promote peace, cooperation and development, promoting the role of Southern countries in global governance institutions, at the same time, demonstrating Vietnam's support and contributions to the success of BRICS during Brazil's presidency. Regarding bilateral relations, PM Chinh emphasised that the relationship between the two countries is developing very well. Agencies of both sides have actively implemented the joint statement on the state visit to Vietnam by President Lula da Silva in March 2025 and the Action Plan to implement the Vietnam - Brazil Strategic Partnership for the period of 2025 - 2030. The two leaders agreed to continue to coordinate in implementing measures to strengthen the bilateral relationship to make it commensurate with the framework of the Strategic Partnership, including maintaining high-level contacts and delegation exchanges, enhancing political trust, and coordinating to effectively implement important agreements that have been reached.

They also agreed to promote cooperation in the fields of defence and security, including defence trade, technology transfer, promoting science and technology cooperation, developing high-quality human resources, mining and trading of minerals, ethanol and biomass energy, digital transformation, semiconductors and artificial intelligence, and justice. The two sides agreed to continue promoting negotiations to sign cooperation documents in the fields of investment protection, double taxation avoidance, and visa facilitation between citizens of the two countries. The two leaders expressed their satisfaction with the very positive and specific results in opening the agricultural markets of the two countries. On this occasion, Brazil exported the first batch of beef to Vietnam and Vietnam exported a batch of tra -basa (pangasius) fish and tilapia to Brazil, contributing to enhancing the effectiveness of economic and trade cooperation, bringing practical benefits to the people and businesses of the two countries. Brazil affirmed its readiness to import more seafood and rice from Vietnam. At the request of the PM, the two sides agreed to sign an agreement on ensuring stable and long-term food security for Brazil, in which Vietnam will export rice to stabilise food for Brazil. The two leaders also agreed to promote cooperation in the coffee industry, promote the formation of a coffee production and export alliance, study and build a coffee trading floor, build a common coffee brand and enhance the coffee drinking culture associated with the culture of the two nations. The two sides agreed to promote a new direction of cooperation, which is to invest in the production and processing of agricultural products locally to serve the two countries' markets and export to other countries, promote the strengths of each country, optimise costs and harmonise interests. To strongly promote trade between the two countries, PM Chinh asked President Lula da Silva to support the early conclusion of the FTA negotiations between Vietnam and the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) in the last six months of 2025 during Brazil's term as MERCOSUR Chair as well as the FTA between Vietnam and Brazil. President Lula da Silva affirmed his support for PM Chinh’s proposal, saying that the two Ministers of Industry and Trade need to immediately discuss and closely coordinate with MERCOSUR members. The two leaders agreed to direct the ministers to immediately implement the specific results of the talks to urgently concretise and bring practical benefits to businesses of the two countries, especially in promoting market opening for goods, agricultural products, and seafood in the context of complicated developments in global trade. The two sides agreed to continue to encourage exchanges between people and youths of the two countries, promote peace, solidarity, and friendship through activities such as sports cooperation and academic exchanges, and create favourable conditions for the Vietnamese and Brazilian communities to integrate and contribute more in each country. Discussing international and regional issues, the two leaders said that it is necessary to continue to promote coordination and cooperation on global governance issues, reform the United Nations, eliminate hunger and reduce poverty, and combat climate change. The two sides agreed to continue to strengthen mutual support at international and regional forums, especially at the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation, the Non-Aligned Movement, South-South cooperation, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). The two sides affirmed the importance of maintaining peace, stability, security, freedom of navigation and aviation in seas, including the East Sea, on the basis of respecting the interests of coastal states, in accordance with international law, especially the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). On this occasion, PM Chinh conveyed the invitation of State President Luong Cuong to President Lula da Silva to attend the signing ceremony of the United Nations Convention against Cybercrime in Hanoi in October 2025.

Immediately after the talks, the two leaders witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in science and technology, innovation and digital transformation and the ceremony to announce the first export shipment of Vietnamese pangasius and tilapia to Brazil and the first export shipment of Brazilian beef to Vietnam.

The two leaders happily emphasised that although they had meetings and talks many times, each meeting had very specific, effective and practical results and new products. Following the previous talks, this talks was very successful with specific results in various fields, bringing practical benefits to both countries, especially promoting the export of Vietnamese agricultural and aquatic products to the very important market of more than 200 million people in the South American region./.