VIETNAM, September 18 - HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam has set its sights on becoming a key transit hub for commercial flows between ASEAN and China, according to Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính.

Chính made the remarks at the 20th China-ASEAN Expo and China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit in Guangxi Province, China yesterday.

He said bilateral trade was riding high over the past years on the back of the Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership between the two countries. However, there is still ample room for further commercial cooperation.

He urged ministries and local authorities to step up trade promotion activities to unlock the full potential of bilateral trade. For Vietnamese producers, he called for greater efforts to improve product quality, build brand names, and embrace state-of-the-art technologies to commercially gain ground in the country of 1.4 billion people.

He also said the Việt Nam-China relationship, one that is of comradeship and brotherhood, would continue to flourish in the years to come, contributing to the prosperity of both countries and their people.

At the trade event, Việt Nam remained the country with the largest number of exhibition booths, around 200, covering a space of nearly 5,000 sqm. Many "high-quality" Vietnamese products were quickly winning the favour of visitors, including Vinamilk, Trung Nguyên Coffee, and Vĩnh Tiến Foods.

After pressing the button to inaugurate the Vietnamese pavilion, the PM expressed his delight that Việt Nam not only had a remarkable number of booths but also a remarkable number of enterprises seeking trade deals at the event.

Scores of trade deals have been stricken on the spot, which, some believed, were "of higher quality than those of previous events". — VNS