During his stay in the Philippines on January 29-30, Minh paid a courtesy visit to Vice President Jejomar Binay and held talks with Foreign Minister Del Rosario. He laid wreaths at President Ho Chi Minh’s statue in ASEAN Park in Manila and visited the Vietnamese Embassy.

At the meeting of Vietnam-Philippines Joint Working Committee on Strategic Partnership, the two sides expressed their delight at the fine development of friendship and cooperative relations in recent years, adding that the cooperation in politics, security, economics, trade, sea, ocean, culture, tourism, and education have made significant progress.

They agreed to maintain regular visit exchange and emphasised on the importance of high-ranking meetings between Presidents Truong Tan Sang and Benigno Aquino on the sidelines of the 22^nd APEC summit in Beijing on November 11, 2014 and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s visit to the Philippines in May 2014.

The two foreign ministers discussed the roadmap and united basic contents to submit to their senior leaders’ consideration towards building strategic partnership in the coming period.

They were pleased at the stable growth of two-way trade turnover which hit US$2.8 billion in 2014 and agreed to restart a meeting of the trade cooperation sub-committee in order to devise specific measures to lift bilateral trade value to US$3 billion.

The two countries will still be important partners in rice trading and continue cooperation in sea and ocean and effectively implement the signed agreements on fisheries, search and rescue and coping with oil spill at sea.

Minh thanked the Philippines for dealing with issues related to Vietnamese fishermen and fishing boats in the spirit of humanity and friendship, helping them return home safely.

The two sides also discussed regional and international issues and showed deep concern over recent provocations in the East Sea. They stressed that relevant sides need to follow the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) and speed up negotiations to an early formulation of the Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC) and that all disputes in the East Sea must be resolved by peaceful solutions in accordance with international law and the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

On January 30, Minh also met Director General of Metro Manila group.