Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is slated to pay an official visit to Vietnam from Sunday to Tuesday, at the invitation of Vietnamese State President Vo Van Thuong, the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Thursday.

The coming trip will mark his first to Vietnam since he took office four years ago and also the first official Vietnam visit by a Kazakh president over the past 12 years.

The visit was originally scheduled for June 11-13 but it was then postponed due to the serious forest fire situation in Kazakhstan’s Abay Province, the ministry reported.

President Thuong will preside over an official welcome ceremony for his Kazakh counterpart in Hanoi on Sunday, and the two leaders will hold talks and witness the signing of several cooperation documents.

In particular, the two heads of state are expected to visit Chu Dau pottery village in northern Hai Duong Province, one of the famous pottery making places in Vietnam.

During his three-day stay in Vietnam, President Tokayev will also meet other leaders of the Party, state, government, and lawmaking National Assembly.

Before becoming the second president of the Central Asian country in June 2019, Tokayev briefly served as acting president after assuming various positions as foreign minister, prime minister, president of the Senate of Kazakhstan, and director-general of the United Nations Office at Geneva, Switzerland.

With an area of more than 2.7 million square kilometers, Kazakhstan is strong in such industries as food, construction, chemical production, metallurgy, and petro-chemistry.

Meanwhile, Vietnam has a strength in agricultural production with many key products.

Vietnam and Kazakhstan established diplomatic relations in 1992 and their bilateral relationship has developed fruitfully ever since.

Trade between Kazakhstan and Vietnam reached nearly US$600 million in 2022, and the two nations are striving to increase the figure to $1.5 billion by 2030.

In March this year, a Kazakh delegation including entrepreneurs and manufacturers came to Vietnam to seek opportunities for trade and investment cooperation.

In 2015, Vietnam signed a free trade agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), of which Kazakhstan is a member, opening up great opportunities for Vietnamese businesses to further penetrate into the EAEU markets in general and Kazakhstan in particular.

The two countries have recently opened direct flight routes connecting each other’s major cities to facilitate investment and trade cooperation as well as people-to-people exchanges.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!