General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Mr Nguyen Phu Trong and his delegation arrived in Vientiane on Nov 24 for an official visit to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.

The visit is the first of its kind since Nguyen Phu Trong was re-elected as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam for his second term at the 12^th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in January this year.

An official welcoming ceremony in honour of the visiting Vietnamese Party leader was held in the morning of the same day at the Presidential Palaceby his Lao counterpart Bounnhang Vorachit, who also doubles as the President of the Lao PDR, in the presence of senior Party and government officials of the two countries.

A bilateral meeting was organized following the official welcoming ceremony where General Secretary Bounnhang Vorachit highly valued the visit by his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Phu Trong as a significant contribution to enhancing the traditional friendly relations, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between the Lao PDR and Vietnam.

Both sides informed each other of the situation of the Parties and governments in their respective countries and highly evaluated the relations and cooperation between the two countries over the past years.

They also focused their discussion on the direction of cooperation in the years to come to lift the special relations between the two countries to a higher level.

Both Party leaders also witnessed the signing of six memoranda of understandings on cooperation in various areas including Vietnam’s support for the construction of the National Assembly of Laos, a school construction project in Borikhamxay Province, the construction of the Vientiane-Hanoi highway, and the implementation of an MoU on strategic transport cooperation for 2016-2020, as well as a Laos-Vietnam strategic cooperation project in Huaphan and Xieng Khuang which will be implemented through 2020.