Egypt keen to enhance Vietnamese tourism: Sisi

CAIRO – 26 May 2018: President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi met with Võ Văn Thưởng, head of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party's Central Committee’s Information and Education Commission and a Politburo member, on Saturday. Sidi said that Egypt is keen to enhance mutual investments between both countries and to revive Vietnamese tourism to Egypt, said Egyptian presidential spokesperson Bassam Radi in a statement.

President Sisi welcomed Thưởng and his accompanying delegation, praising the bilateral relations between the two countries, which saw improvement during Sisi’s visit to Hanoi in September 2017, the statement added.

Thưởng expressed Vietnam’s keenness to follow up on the results of President Sisi’s visit, expressing his country’s appreciation for Egypt’s international and regional counterterrorism efforts to bring stability and safety to the Middle East.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met Thưởng and his delegation on Thursday, discussing ways of reinforcing the relations in all fields, said Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid in a statement.

Main fields tackled by both countries include developing fisheries, rice cultivation in areas of scarce water, and manufacturing ships, according to Abu Zeid’s statement.  Egypt is suffering water scarcity and passed a law to reduce water-intensive crops such as rice and sugarcane, and the country could be turned from a rice exporter to importer. Vietnam is the second largest rice exporter in the world after Thailand.

Abu Zeid added that that the two sides discussed communications and information technology, oil, gas and renewable energy, as well as small and medium enterprises. Egypt’s Al-Azhar University also agreed to increase the number of academic scholarships to Vietnam from 3 to 10 annually.

The Egyptian government and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes Vietnam, signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), Abu Zeid continued, saying, “Egypt is interested in becoming a ‘Dialogue Partner’ of the association and hopes to receive Vietnam's support in this regard.”

The trade volume between Egypt and Vietnam increased to $377 million in 2017, compared with $266 million in 2016, at an increase of 41.7 percent, said Saeed Abdullah, head of the Trade Agreements Sector at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, on Sunday, Egypt’s state-owned MENA reported.