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VN, Denmark look to boost partnership
Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc yesterday applauded the delegation led by Denmark Minister for Trade and Investment Pia Olsen Dyhr which visits Viet Nam in a bid to boost ties in areas ranging from food technology to healthcare and climate change.
Phuc thanked Denmark for being one of the major donors of official development assistance to the country and for its support in commerce and trade ties with the Europe.
He stated that the EU is one of the top partners in trade and commerce for Viet Nam and asked for Denmark’s continued support of the FTA negotiations with the union. He also called for them to soon acknowledge Viet Nam as having a market economy.
The Danish minister asked Vietnamese policy makers to facilitate Danish investors doing business in the country.
Also yesterday, Viet Nam and Denmark also held a workshop on green growth partnership in waste treatment and renewable energy.
Viet Nam’s rapid economic growth and intensive urbanisation had placed significant pressures on the environment, explained Danish Minister of Trade and Investment Pia Olsen Dyhr. Waste disposal was a matter of particular concern, as most waste was dumped in landfills and not recycled profitably.
Given the many challenges that the country faced in waste treatment - financial shortages, technology selection, management capacity and public awareness - enterprises’ involvement was crucial for green growth, Quang said.
Danish enterprises were looking for Vietnamese partners to exchange technology and strengthen knowledge, according to Dyhr, who pointed out that waste could be a valuable resource to produce raw materials or generate energy.
Le Van Thuc, director of Ha Noi-based Son Tay Urban Environment Company, said that sorting waste for further processing and treatment was difficult and costly.
The company currently has a 27-hectare dumping area that can deal with 200-300 tonnes of waste per day, but Thuc warned that as discharged waste piled up to thousands of tonnes in the next few years, the company would be unable to tackle the problem without technological improvements.
Diabetes training
On the same day, Danish Minister Pia Olsen also witnessed the signing ceremony of an MoU to send 2,000 Vietnamese physicians on a diabetes education programme
The MoU was signed between Viet Nam’s Ministry of Health and Denmark’s Steno Diabetes Centre.
The physicians come from hospitals across Viet Nam including the HCM City based Cho Ray and Nguyen Tri Phuong hospitals and the Ha Noi-based National Hospital of Endocrinology.
The three-year training programme will run on a “train-the-trainers” concept, aiming to increase the capacity of diabetes management.
The training programme is part of the public-private partnership known as the Viet Nam Diabetes Care Programme 2012-2015 which was formally launched in November last year.
An estimated five million people in Viet Nam suffer from diabetes, but 60 per cent remain undiagnosed.
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