"A steady and confidential political dialogue has been established between the leaders of the two countries. Last year alone our presidents met on two occasions as the Vietnamese president came on an official visit to Moscow in May and the two presidents held talks at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Chile," said Yakovenko.
Inter-parliamentary relations are also on the rise.
"This is evidence that Russian-Vietnamese relations which marked 55 years last January are developing in compliance with the Declaration on strategic partnership between the two countries, signed as Vladimir Putin was on an official visit to Vietnam in March 2001," said Yakovenko.
Major success has been scored by the joint venture Vietsovpetro, the leader in the gas-and-oil industry. Vietsovpetro experts discovered in 1988 a unique highly-productive oil deposit in the granites of the crystalline basement located at a depth of more than 3,000 meters, which accounts today for 95 percent of the joint venture's oil extraction. It is largely due to the performance of Vietsovpetro that the world's major oil companies have been increasingly attracted to the Vietnamese shelf. With the continued expansion of its resources and introduction of new technologies, Vietsovpetro built up its extraction from 3.96 million tons in 1991 to 12.2 million tons in 2004.
