On the morning of April 28, at the Presidential Palace, President Luong Cuong received Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru, who is on an official visit to Vietnam from April 27 to 29.

At the reception, President Luong Cuong, on behalf of the State and people of Vietnam, welcomed the first visit of Mr. Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru expressed his delight at witnessing the substantive, comprehensive and effective development of the bilateral relationship in all areas and the many new developments and outstanding achievements after nearly two years of upgrading the relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership for peace and prosperity in Asia and the world.

President Luong Cuong affirmed that Vietnam attaches importance to its relationship with Japan and supports Japan in promoting an increasingly active role, contributing to peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region and the world.

The President believes that Prime Minister Ishiba's visit will open a new stage of development in the bilateral relationship towards closer and more effective development, meeting the interests of the two peoples and contributing to cooperation and development in the region.

Prime Minister Ishiba thanked President Luong Cuong for his warm and cordial welcome and was pleased to see him again since the Summit Week. Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC) in Peru in November 2024 and visited Vietnam again at a time when Vietnam was organizing activities to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Liberation of the South and National Reunification Day and witnessed the great changes in Vietnam.

Prime Minister Ishiba affirmed that Japan will continue to accompany and support Vietnam in building an independent and self-reliant economy, realizing the goals of becoming a developing country with modern industry and high average income by 2030 and a developed country with high income by 2045.

Emphasizing the importance of defense-security cooperation, Prime Minister Ishiba welcomed the recent announcement by both sides to establish a 2+2 Dialogue mechanism at the Deputy Foreign and Defense Minister level and expressed his wish that the two countries would further strengthen defense-security cooperation.

President Luong Cuong suggested that both sides effectively implement signed cooperation agreements, while promoting and exchanging new cooperation contents.

President Luong Cuong said that there is still much room for economic cooperation between the two countries to be promoted, and suggested that both sides deepen economic, trade and investment cooperation, promote science and technology cooperation, and implement specific cooperation projects in new areas such as digital transformation, green transformation, high-quality human resource training, semiconductors, AI, etc.; support Vietnam in improving its capacity to respond to climate change; and promote high-tech agricultural cooperation.

Appreciating the positive contributions to Japan of the 630,000 Vietnamese community in Japan, Prime Minister Ishiba affirmed that the Japanese Government will continue to support and create favorable conditions for Vietnamese people to live, study and work in Japan; wishing to further promote people-to-people and cultural exchanges between the two countries.

Discussing world and regional issues, the two sides agreed to strengthen coordination, share positions, cooperate and support each other on regional and international issues of mutual concern and in multilateral mechanisms such as the United Nations, APEC, ASEAN, and Mekong, contributing to strengthening an equal and fair international system based on international law and the United Nations Charter.

President Luong Cuong expressed his gratitude to Japan for supporting ASEAN's stance on resolving disputes by peaceful means on the basis of international law, especially the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS 1982).

On this occasion, Chairman Luong Cuong respectfully invited the King and Queen of Japan to visit Vietnam soon.