Leaders from seven Vietnamese northern border provinces and two neighboring localities met Friday in Hanoi to discuss ways of strengthening their trade, and accelerating border economic development of the two countries.

Addressing at the meeting, Vietnamese Trade Minister Truong Dinh Tuyen said border trade has had an important role in developing Vietnam-China trade and economic ties in the context of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area, the two economic corridors, the Beibu Gulf economic belt, and the Greater Mekong Sub-region ( Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Yunnan province).

The border trade has helped improve living standard of people in border areas, as well as step up economic development of the two countries, he stated.

At the meeting, the leaders from Vietnam's Lao Cai, Ha Giang, Lai Chau, Cao Bang, Dien Bien, Lang Son and Quang Ninh and China's Yunnan province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region signed a memorandum of understanding, under which the two sides will facilitate delegation exchanges, jointly solve issues, and inform each other about their market demand and product quality to increase import volume.

The two sides agreed to propose the governments of the two countries intensify investment in building and upgrading infrastructure in border localities, especially railways, roads and border gates to facilitate goods flows. They also proposed the governments approve several Chinese-invested projects like iron ore mining in Lao Cai province.

At a recent meeting of the China-Vietnam Joint Committee on Economic and Trade Cooperation, the two sides agreed to boost their economic and trade cooperation, and fulfill the two-way trade target of 15 billion US dollars by 2010.

The bilateral trade, which stood at 6.74 billion US dollars in 2004, up 45.3 percent against 2003, is expected to reach 8 billion US dollars this year.

The free trade area between China and the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was formally launched in July. Since then both sides have gradually cut down tariffs on more than 7,000 goods items, so that all the duties will be removed by 2015 as targeted.

Source: Xinhua