Talks have opened regarding the creation of a Free Trade Zone between Vietnam and the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan

A delegation from the three CIS countries was headed by Ekaterina Mayorova, deputy head of the Department for Trade Negotiations in the Ministry of Social Development and Trade. Dang Hoang Hai (head of the Department for the European Market in the Ministry of Industry and Trade), along with staff from the Ministries for Industry and Trade, Planning and Investments, and the Finance Ministry, took part in the negotiations on the Vietnamese side.
Russia and Vietnam negotiated to speed up the process for signing a Free Trade Zone Agreement in December 2009 during a visit to Moscow by Vietnam's Prime Minister, Nguen Tan Zunga. The participants at this current meeting observed that, from their perspective, they are speeding up multilateral collaboration and the implementation of agreements reached when the Vietnamese premier was in Moscow, in particular the Strategic Partnership Agreement between the Russian company Gazprom and the Vietnamese National Oil-and-Gas Group PetroVietnam.
The future agreement opens up prospects for creating a free trade zone with an area of 20,200,000 square kilometres, a population size in excess of 253 million people, and a GDP of 1.5 billion dollars.
Aleksei Miller, chairman of the board of Gazprom, and Fung Din Tkhik, Chief Executive of the Vietnamese National Oil-and-Gas Group PetroVietnam, signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement in Moscow on 15 December 2009 in the presence of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and the Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Nguen Tan Zunga.
In accordance with this document, the parties will continue in particular with joint exploration work in blocks 112 and 129-132 of Vietnam's continental shelf within the scope of the Oil-and-Gas contract concluded earlier. The project operator for the development of the afore-mentioned blocks is the Joint Operating Company Vietgazprom.