At the invitation of World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, WTO General Council Chair Didier Chambovey and First Deputy Chief of the Office of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Timur Suleimenov, from 10-17 June 2022, Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Hong Dien led the Vietnamese delegation to attend the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC12) in Geneva, Switzerland. The delegation included representatives of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

MC12 took place in the context that countries have been facing many great challenges such as handling the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, recovering economic and trade, international geo-political tensions resulting in serious effects on food security and the world economy.

At MC12, Ministers discussed many important and urgent issues such as WTO's solutions to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic (including the proposal to temporarily waive the TRIPS - Agreement on Aspects of trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights), agriculture, fisheries subsidies, WTO reforms, food security, e-commerce, etc.

At MC12, Minister Dien delivered a speech affirming his support for the multilateral trading system as well as affirming efforts together with Members to join hands in responding to challenges the global economy is facing [Full text of the speech is available on the WTO website at the following link: https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/mc12_e/mc12_statements_e.htm]

On the sidelines of MC12, Minister Dien also attended a number of meetings of the Group of Agricultural Exporting Countries (Cairns Group), a session on Trade and Climate; as well as bilateral meetings with a number of partners such as the EU, Australia, Singapore, Israel... to consolidate and promote bilateral and multilateral cooperation.