OREANDA-NEWS. Senior VTB Vice President and Head of the Financial Subsidiaries Division Mikhail Yakunin and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam Tran Bak Ha have signed a memorandum on comprehensive cooperation.

This document is a follow-up to the memorandum, signed in April 2015, on mutual understanding and improving the role and capabilities of VTB’s subsidiary in Vietnam: the Vietnam-Russia Joint Venture Bank (VRB).

The memorandum outlines practical steps and measures that the parties plan to implement in order to ramp up and expand economic cooperation between the two countries, and to strengthen VRB’s role in economic integration. In light of the upcoming signing of a free trade agreement between Vietnam and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), improved cooperation between VTB and the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam will expand areas for cooperation between Russia and Vietnam.

The sides plan to focus on areas such as a direct two-way payment channel between Russia and Vietnam to support export and import transactions in national currencies. In addition, the document provides for using VRB to service export/import transactions between Russian and Vietnamese companies. There are plans for VRB to provide financial and banking services for key economic projects between Vietnam and Russia, including in the nuclear and energy spheres.

The sides also agreed to cooperate on VRB’s development strategy for 2016-18, which provides for increasing the bank’s role in the market and improving its efficiency.

While VTB and the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam already have a long-standing partnership, the signing of this document is timely, as it sets out milestones for cooperation between two leading banks in Vietnam and Russia.