Made For Each Other: Vietnam Wants Oil, Saudi Arabia Wants Rice
By Indigneous
Published: April 11, 2010
Like many countries specifically in the Persian Gulf or Arabin Gulf area, Saudi Arabia require a large amount of imports of vegetables, rice, and the other usual agricultural products. It also heavily relies on foreign labor forces from Asia.
Vietnam remains to be one of the top exporters of farmed goods to Saudi Arabia and many other countries. Vietnam on the other hand needs significant investments in its refineries and reinforcement of its petroleum and energy sectors; Saudi Arabia is of course the major supplier of oil for Vietnam.
Thus, Vietnam’s President Nguyen Minh Triet went on a two-day, friendly visit to the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. Triet, along with some of his ministers including Vu Huy Hoang, the Minister of Trade and Industry and a few other officials working in the fields of energy met with the figures of the huge Saudi oil industry.
Vietnamese President Triet encouraged both the Saudi oil ministry and businessmen of the famous oil firm Aramco to invest in Vietnam and possibly its two refineries.
Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet.
Triet promised that Vietnam will build up the bilateral trade, exceed the amounts of agricultural imports Saudi Arabia was seeking for, and had even given hints of increasing the number of Vietnamese workers in Saudi Arabia which is currently at 7,000.
In fact, the Vietnamese President ensured that he will “work to implement all the proposals made during the meeting immediately.”
As Vietnam holds the current presidency of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council is pleased to be forging stronger relationships with both Vietnam and the ASEAN at the same time.
Relations between the two countries not being estranged, the two sides immediately signed protocols on cooperation in minerals development, agreed on a bilateral taxation treaty, approved of a pact on trade cooperation between the two sides.
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