Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang is on a four-day official visit to Hungary, meeting Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as well as Hungarian ministers and other public dignitaries, including his Hungarian counterpart President János Áder, Speaker of Parliament László Kövér and Budapest Mayor István Tarlós. The President has also opened an exhibition of Vietnamese ceramics at Budapest’s Museum of Ethnography and addressed a Vietnamese-Hungarian business forum today, stressing Vietnam’s openness towards investors from Hungary.

With a view to boosting bilateral relations between Hungary and Vietnam, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held talks with President Truong Tan Sang on Monday. The two politicians agreed that both countries would seek to provide further impetus to bilateral trade, which currently amount to USD 120 million. To this end, a joint Hungarian-Vietnamese economic committee will be set up to boost bilateral trade, primarily in the areas of water management, health care and agriculture. Both Viktor Orbán and Truong Tan Sang called cooperation between the two countries within the field of education outstanding, adding that they considered it important for more Vietnamese students to study in Hungary within the Stipendium Hungaricum Scholarship Program, which forms part of the Government's policy of opening towards the East.

After the Vietnamese head of state’s meeting with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the two governments concluded bilateral agreements in a large number of policy areas as a culmination of forging closer relations between the two countries. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Public Administration and Justice Tibor Navracsics and Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh concluded a treaty on the transfer of sentenced persons, making the extradition process between the two countries and the transfer of sentenced persons simpler, thus facilitating more efficient action against international crime. Minister of State for Energy Pál Kovács and Vietnam's Deputy Minister of Education Pham Manh Hung signed an agreement on bilateral cooperation within the fields of nuclear training, research, administration and technology. An agreement on water cooperation has been signed between Minister for Rural Development Sándor Fazekas and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Cao Duc Phat, complementing the existing inter-ministerial treaties relating to agricultural research and development, crop production, animal husbandry and feed production, water management and forest management. Finally, Minister of Human Resources Zoltán Balog signed an intergovernmental treaty on culture, sports and healthcare with his Vietnamese counterpart, formulating several concrete objectives such as the promotion of direct cooperation between cultural, sports and health institutions in the two countries and the translation of literary works to both languages.

(Prime Minister's Office)