At the Vietnam - New Zealand online high-level conference held on July 22, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern officially announced upgrading cooperation between the two countries to Strategic partnerships to create impetus to promote cooperation to continue to go in depth and become more and more effective in all fields.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc highly appreciated the comprehensive development of friendship and cooperation between the two countries in nearly half a century, especially political-diplomatic relations, economic and trade cooperation, agriculture, education and people exchange. The Prime Minister acknowledged that New Zealand's official development assistance over the past years has effectively contributed to Vietnam's socio-economic development.
In the context of the world and regional economies affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Prime Minister suggested the two sides make efforts to maintain the development of trade cooperation, striving to bring two-way turnover to 2 billion soon USD / year; proposed New Zealand to open more markets for Vietnamese agricultural products, sharing experiences in branding and developing value chains of some fruits to reach high standard markets.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern congratulated Vietnam on its extremely successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic, expressing impressions on effective anti-epidemic measures, demonstrating the Government's determination to protect health, lives of people as well as foreign citizens in Vietnam; believes that the two countries have a good control of the epidemic, creating favorable conditions for the two countries to soon restore connections and cooperate in all fields.
Prime Minister Ardern highly appreciated Vietnam's active role and contribution as a non-permanent member of the Security Council as well as to UN peacekeeping activities over the past time; Thank you Viet Nam for its active support and contribution to the promotion of the ASEAN-New Zealand Strategic Partnership.
The two Prime Ministers agreed to assign the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the two countries to soon build the Action Plan to implement the Strategic Partnership including strengthening delegation exchanges on the Party, Government and National Assembly channels and organize regular meetings between the two Prime Ministers, annual meetings between the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Defense and Industry and Trade between the leaders of the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security and the New Zealand Police Agency, as well as bilateral dialogue mechanisms on agriculture, marine cooperation and other issues of mutual interest.

The two sides agreed to continue promoting defense and security cooperation in an increasingly real direction through delegation exchange activities, policy consultation, port visits, cooperation in training and training and coordination of fight transnational crime. The two sides also emphasized their determination to improve cooperation efficiency in fields, especially education, science - technology and people-to-people exchange.

The two Prime Ministers affirmed their commitment to enhancing cooperation and mutual support at multilateral forums, especially when Vietnam is the President of ASEAN 2020, a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for the term 2020. In 2021, New Zealand prepares to assume the role of APEC Chair in 2021, the two countries are both active members of new generation free trade agreements such as CPTPP and RCEP.
The two sides simultaneously emphasized that Vietnam and New Zealand have similar views and interests on many regional and international issues of mutual concern, and support multilateralism and the regional and international order based on regulations. While continuing to express their concerns about developments in the South China Sea, the two sides reaffirmed the importance of maintaining peace, stability, security, safety and freedom of navigation and overflight, and mediating settlement. Comment on disputes based on international law, especially the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), emphasizing UNCLOS as a solid legal framework governing all activities in the seas and oceans. At the same time, it called on the parties to respect the decision of the dispute settlement mechanism of UNCLOS.