The event was co-chaired by Da Nang People's Committee Vice Chairman Ho Ky Minh and Mr Nguyen Van Thao, the Assistant to Minister of Foreign Affairs cum Head of General Economics Department. Also present were representatives from some Viet Nam-based foreign diplomatic agencies, along with departments, associations, and domestic and foreign businesses in Da Nang.

According to an overall report released at the event, economic diplomacy has harmoniously combined with political and cultural diplomacy, thus making a practical and effective contribution to Da Nang’s socio-economic development and its international cooperation, and in harmony with Viet Nam's industrialisation, modernisation and its global integration over recent years.

Over the 2016 - 2020 period, Da Nang has established friendly and cooperative relationships with 45 localities of 20 countries and territories all over the world. Many bilateral agreements have been signed and implemented with international financial institutions and business associations, foreign corporations in a bid to drive the city’s growth, especially bilateral cooperation in investment, trade and tourism.

Many cooperation programmes have brought many highly practical benefits to Da Nang in such aspects as planning, urban construction, environmental protection, and sustainable development.

Also during the five-year review period, Da Nang attracted 530 FDI projects worth 1,045.4 billion US$ in total, 6 ODA projects totalling about over 5,933 billion VND, 351 programmes using a total of about 598 billion VND worth of foreign non-governmental aids.

Da Nang’s exports hit an estimated 7,622 billion US$, an average annual increase of 5.7%, whilst its imports reached over 6.5 billion US$, up 1.7% on a year-on-year basis.

‘Made-in-Da Nang’ exports made their presence in about 120 worldwide countries and territories.

Also encouragingly, the number of international tourists to Da Nang grew well, reaching an average annual growth of 29.15%.

Noticeably, Da Nang was the host of many international influential events such as the 2015 - 2016 Clipper Round the World Race, the 5th Asian Beach Games (ABG5) in 2016, the 2017 APEC Economic Leaders’ Week, the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF)’s 37th Board of Governors (BoG) and related meetings in 2017, the 6th Assembly of the Global Environment Facility (GEF-6) in 2018, the ASEAN Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM) in 2020.

As for its economic diplomacy tasks set for the 2021 – 2025 period, Da Nang will press ahead with the research and forecasting of the world’s political situation and new trends in global economic transformation to serve its development policy making.

Heed will be paid to optimising the support of Vietnamese ministries and national government agencies, using existing resources and advantages, and boosting multilateral diplomacy to foster economic integration and exchanges, and international trade, in tandem with effectively tapping new-generation free trade agreements in the coming time.

Also, importance will be attached to mapping put effective methods of economic diplomacy to raise the efficiency of investment, trade, and tourism promotion activities in the new circumstances.

Greater efforts will be made to enhance the international integration capacity of agencies, individuals, and businesses in Da Nang, and set up linkages with overseas Vietnamese, experts, enterprises, and foreign partners to drive the city's socio-economic development.

Vice Chairman Minh suggested the Ministry of Foreign Affairs assist Da Nang in cooperating with more partners, investors, multinational corporations with high financial capacity, facilitating its enterprises to access foreign consumer markets, protecting their legitimate rights and interests in international economic and commercial exchange relationships, and boosting its participation in multilateral economic cooperation forums.

Also at the Friday event, certificates of merit from Da Nang government were presented to 6 organistions and 4 individuals in recognition of their dedication and commitment for the city’s economic diplomacy over the 2016 - 2020 period.

(Source: https://baodanang.vn/english)