Newsroom

And we also celebrated on 6 January with HSBC on the occasion of their inauguration as the first foreign bank to incorporate a 100% local Vietnamese operation. A great sign of British business confidence in the future prospects for this country.

A lot of interesting meetings this week. Much work on preparing the visits of Sir Peter Ricketts, Permanent Under Secretary of the FCO, and Gareth Thomas, Minister of Trade and Development before Tet.

But also two important visits this week. Firstly, Jim Gamble, the Head of the UK child Exploitation and Online Protection Agency. Jim’s work aims to protect children from sexual exploitation and abuse from Paedophiles. The UK and Vietnam will be working to tackle this evil phenomenon. Tim had a lot of useful meetings with the Vietnamese authorities, civil society and business. On Thursday, we had dinner with Vice Minister Quang, General Cuong and Mr Quoc of the MPS. It was also a good occasion to commemorate the cooperation between the UK and the MPS over the last year, and to make plans for further work in 2009.

Secondly, a visit by Dr Razeen Sally of the LSE. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in cooperation with the British Embassy, organised a week of training courses where Dr Sally gave lectures on trade policy. He first spoke to the Diplomatic Academy, then to about 100 members of various ministries. I also attended, together with colleagues from the British Embassy, DFID and the European Commission. It was a very valuable opportunity to exchange ideas. Dr Sally doesn’t agree with all of the UK government policies, but we all agree on the main point that the way forward for the world economy, including Vietnam, is through greater free trade, liberalisation and economic reforms. I opened the seminar on 7 January with MoFA Vice Minister Cuong and I learned a lot from Dr Sally’s presentation. For more details, see his website (ECIPE) and his latest book. For comparison, see the UK government’s latest paper on how to tackle the global economic crisis. Economic dialogue and cooperation will be very important in 2009, and I hope to establish a programme of such events.

I also met Mr Tri, the CEO of Yahoo! Vietnam to discuss their plans and internet development. And I also saw representatives of the BBC World Service and Vietnamese Service to discuss their plans here, including for teaching English via their website. And I gave a number of interviews to journalists about my plans for Tet. They’re not finalised yet, but I expect that we will spend some time in Thai Nguyen, as Martine’s Vietnamese family have invited us to spend some time there (Anh Thu and his son came to see us on Sunday to meet us, our children and my mother-in-law, and brought a Tet cake which we ate together and he invited us to visit during Tet.

And we also celebrated on 6 January with HSBC and Vietnamese colleagues on the occasion of their inauguration as the first foreign bank to incorporate a 100% local Vietnamese operation. A great sign of British business partnership with Vietnam and confidence in the future prospects for this country.

I haven’t had time to start my Vietnamese lessons again. I’ve emailed co Nguyet, and hope we can meet up this weekend!

Mark Kent - British Ambassador to Vietnam