Prince Andrew returns to deepen UK-Vietnam ties

HCMC - Prince Andrew will come back to Vietnam tomorrow to represent the United Kingdom at the 1,000th grand celebrations of Thang Long-Hanoi and to further speed up bilateral trade and investment relations with Vietnam. The UK Embassy in Hanoi said on Thursday that Prince Andrew would visit Vietnam from tomorrow to next Wednesday in his capacity as the UK Special Representative for International Trade and Investment. The Duke of York’s upcoming visit aims to raise the UK’s profile as a major trading and investment partner of Vietnam, about one month after the UK and Vietnam inked a strategic partnership to spur multi-faceted cooperation. As scheduled, Prince Andrew will attend a gala dinner tomorrow and the parade at Ba Dinh Square the day after in Hanoi. As a guest of the Vietnamese Government, he will call on the country’s President and Prime Minister and be at a lunch hosted by Deputy Prime Minister cum Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem. The dignitary will attend the opening of the British University of Vietnam and the launch of the Duke of York Scholarship as well as the inauguration of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases, of Standard Chartered Bank’s latest branch and Savills’ new premises. Prince Andrew will deliver the closing remarks at a seminar on public private partnerships to help promote the concept and the expertise of the UK as a provider of PPP solutions before traveling to HCMC next week to meet with municipal authorities. In HCMC, Prince Andrew will have meetings with British companies on urban development, financial services and the oil and gas industry. Also on the agenda is a meeting with Vietnamese entrepreneurs, which also highlights further investment opportunities for British companies in Vietnam, and encourage Vietnam to regard the UK as the main business gateway into Europe. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s first-ever visit to the UK in March 2008 laid a firm foundation for further UK-Vietnam cooperation. Last year saw UK's imports from Vietnam reach some US$1.8 billion and exports to this country stand at about US$348 million. The UK is Vietnam’s third largest European Union investor after France and the Netherlands, with 126 projects worth over US$2.2 billion as of June 2010, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment. Prince Andrew was in Vietnam in October last year to meet with Prime Minister Dung and other high-ranking officials and to launch the third UK-Vietnam Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO) meeting in Hanoi. He also visited Vietnam in 1999, 2006 and then 2008 when he witnessed a ceremony awarding local incorporation licenses to Standard Chartered and HSBC banks.