Danish Minister of Trade and Development Cooperation Mogens Jensen is visiting Vietnam to better trade relations between his country and the Southeast Asian host nation.

Minister Jensen attended a Denmark-Vietnam business workshop held in Hanoi on Monday as part of his first-ever Vietnam visit that kicked off the same day and will end on January 22.

He was accompanied by a delegation of 40 Danish companies – operating in food, climate, and energy – which are eager to partner up with Vietnamese companies.

At the workshop, Minister Jensen and Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh witnessed the signing ceremony between the two countries’ enterprises, particularly the MoU on processing oil and gas between Haldor Topsoe from Denmark and PetroVietnam – a state-owned Vietnamese oil giant.

Speaking to Tuoi Tre News on the sidelines of the workshop, Minister Jensen said his main mission is to improve commercial ties between Vietnam and Denmark on the basis of many years of mutual friendship and cooperation.

“The first stage of cooperation was that Vietnam received development aid from Denmark and it is now expanded into business [partnership], especially in the food, energy, and education sectors,” he told Tuoi Tre News.

On Monday morning, Minister Jensen attended a job fair hosted by the Danish Ambassador to Vietnam, John Nielsen, at his residential home.

The event was designed for 63 Vietnamese students participating in the four-year American-certified bachelor program in finance jointly offered by Denmark’s Niels Brock Copenhagen Business College and Vietnam’s Foreign Trade University.

Denmark is currently the 3rd largest exporting country to Vietnam among EU countries (measured per capita).

More than 130 Danish companies are doing business in Vietnam. Danish companies mainly focus their activities on the following sectors: furniture and textiles, energy efficiency and environment (clean tech), information and communications technology, electronics and software, transport and logistics (maritime), food and food safety, and health.

According to Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh, Denmark ranks 25^th among 101 countries which have business and investment partnerships with Vietnam.  

Denmark also offers assistance to Vietnam in the fields of infrastructure improvement, sustainable development, and coping with climate change.

According to Deputy Minister Anh, in 2014, bilateral trade between the two countries reached US$450 million.

Their trade value grew by 6.45 percent last year, in which Vietnam exported goods worth $300 million to Denmark, a 15 percent increase over the previous year.

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