Minister of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) of the UK Victoria Prentis on May 25 highlighted the importance of the Vietnam-UK agriculture and rural development cooperation, especially now that the UK government considers Vietnam as a vital partner in the Indo-Pacific region.

During talks with visiting Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam Phung Duc Tien at the headquarters of DEFRA, Prentis affirmed her country’s commitment to strongly support the transformation of Vietnam's agriculture towards green, low emission and sustainable development.

For his part, Tien proposed specific cooperation, including in the field of policy, to develop green and low-emission agriculture, promote the opening of agro-forestry-aquaculture markets, and strengthen cooperation in sustainable development, climate change adaptation and biodiversity.

He expressed his hope that the two sides will soon sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on cooperation in agriculture and rural development, thus promoting and realising priority cooperation programmes and activities in 2022-2025.

Regarding future orientations for cooperation, the Vietnamese official suggested the UK government to soon consider opening the market for fresh fruits such as mango, passion fruit, grapefruit, litchi, and longan; and processed pork and poultry products, poultry eggs, and milk and dairy products, from Vietnam.

To increase trade in livestock products between the two countries, Deputy Minister Tien proposed the UK side to provide veterinary hygiene and food safety requirements.

Prentis agreed on Tien’s assessment of the cooperation potential between the two ministries in the near future, and noted proposals of Vietnam to promote the opening of the market.

She suggested Vietnam consider to soon import some pork and chicken products of the UK, and affirmed her country’s commitment to strongly support the transformation of Vietnam's agriculture towards green, low emission and sustainable development.

Bilateral cooperation in agriculture has been over the recent past promoted and achieved important progress. Agricultural, forestry and fishery products of the two countries are exported to each other with increasing turnovers, especially after the UK-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (UKVFTA) officially took effect in May 2021./.