Vietnam and Russia's Far East Region to Deepen Cooperation on Resources and Labor

Vietnamese Finance Minister Ngo Van Tuan met with Aysen Nikolayev, Head of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Russian Federation, on September 3rd in Vladivostok, Russia. The meeting took place during the 11th Eastern Economic Forum (EEF). During the meeting, both sides discussed directions for promoting cooperation between Vietnam and the Sakha Republic, focusing on areas with potential and aligning with each side's strengths. Minister Ngo Van Tuan highly appreciated the potential and strengths of the Sakha Republic in fields such as minerals, diamonds, coal, energy, and liquefied natural gas. He expressed hope for businesses from both sides to explore opportunities for cooperation, investment, and trade. He also proposed leveraging the complementarity between the resources and raw materials of the Sakha Republic and Vietnam's processing capabilities, market access, and free trade agreement network, particularly in agriculture, aquaculture, food processing, mineral processing, and consumer goods. Regarding labor and training, Minister Ngo Van Tuan acknowledged the Sakha Republic's demand for human resources, given Vietnam's strength in labor. Both sides can study organized labor cooperation that complies with the laws of both countries, linked with vocational training, thereby creating a practical and mutually beneficial area of cooperation. On inter-regional cooperation, the Minister welcomed and supported the Sakha Republic's proposal to enhance cooperation with Vietnamese localities. Discussions also covered expanding cooperation in culture, sports, education-training, tourism, and people-to-people exchanges. Minister Ngo Van Tuan noted the existing cooperation foundation, including the participation of art and sports delegations from the Sakha Republic in many events in Vietnam, and proposed further expanding exchange activities. An important topic was facilitating cooperation and addressing challenges, especially in payments, logistics, market information, and legal matters, as well as establishing mechanisms to support businesses and investors from both sides. Introducing the region's strengths, Aysen Nikolayev stated that the Sakha Republic, located in northeastern Russia, spans over 3 million km² across three time zones. It is one of Russia's most mineral-rich regions, ranking first nationally in the extraction of diamonds, gold, and antimony. Coal, oil, natural gas, platinum, and many other minerals are also extracted on a large scale. The Sakha Republic is also among Russia's top 10 regions for IT service exports and is actively developing its innovation infrastructure. Mr. Nikolayev emphasized that the Sakha Republic highly values inter-regional cooperation with Vietnam and wishes to strengthen cooperation with Vietnamese localities in various fields, including agriculture and veterinary medicine. He expressed hope that restoring direct flights between the two sides would boost tourism and expand trade, economic, and cultural relations. Both sides agreed to continue exchanges and promote specific cooperation initiatives, contributing to increasingly practical and effective relations between the localities of Vietnam and the Sakha Republic. Minister Ngo Van Tuan also cordially invited leaders and a delegation from the Sakha Republic to visit and work in Vietnam. Earlier, within the framework of attending the Eastern Economic Forum 2026, Vietnamese Finance Minister Ngo Van Tuan held a working session with leaders of the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East and Arctic. During this meeting, both sides discussed enhancing transport and logistics connectivity between Russia's Far East regions and Vietnam, thereby concretizing cooperation projects and facilitating trade flows. They also exchanged views on potential areas for promoting goods exchange, including agriculture, raw materials from the Far East to Vietnam, seafood, timber, fuel, and coal. One of the issues addressed was resolving payment difficulties to create more favorable conditions for businesses of both countries to implement trade and investment contracts and expand cooperation. Source: Nhan Dan