Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung left here Wednesday morning for a five-day official visit to Japan, which aims at fostering the friendly and multi-faceted cooperative relations between the two countries.

Dung, the first foreign guest of newly-elected Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is scheduled to hold talks with his counterpart, and meet with Japanese Emperor Akihito, leaders of the Japanese Senate and representatives of some big economic groups. He is also expected to attend an investment promotion seminar in Japan.

The Vietnam-Japan ties have smoothly developed in many fields, especially trade and investment, in recent years.

Japan is now one of Vietnam's biggest trade and investment partners. In 2005, their trade rose 19.7 percent to more than 8.5 billion U.S. dollars, according to the Vietnamese Trade Ministry.

By the end of last year, Japan had 600 operational investment projects with total registered capital of nearly 6.3 billion dollars in Vietnam, becoming the third biggest investor in the country, after Singapore and China's Taiwan, according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment.

Source: Xinhua