North Korea and Vietnam sign banking pact to boost trade
Reuters
North Korea and Vietnam sign banking pact to boost trade
10 March 2004
HANOI - North Korea has signed a banking pact with Vietnam as it moves
to boost bilateral trade with a fellow communist country, an official
from North Korea’s embassy in Hanoi said today.
The agreement was signed in Hanoi on Monday between Vietnam’s central
bank and North Korea’s Bank for Foreign Trade during a visit by its
deputy chairman, Kim Myon Sok.
"At present bilateral trade is very, very low but the new pact will
boost it," the official from the embassy’s commercial section told
Reuters.
He declined to give details.
The Thoi Bao Ngan Hang (Banking Times) newspaper said that under the
pact, trade transactions between businesses from the two countries would
be settled in a third currency to be determined at the time of the
transaction.
Pyongyang has sent several delegations to Hanoi to study the free market,
as it begins to introduce market reforms to its centrally planned
system, in an effort to revive an almost moribund economy shattered by
years of mismanagement.
