Myanmar’s military-appointed President Min Aung Hlaing yesterday wound up a three-day visit to Vietnam, during which he and Hanoi’s top leaders agreed to expand cooperation across a broad front.

The former general arrived in Vietnam on Friday, part of a diplomatic campaign aimed at consolidating ties with regional governments and normalizing relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

In addition to meeting top leaders including President To Lam and Prime Minister Le Minh Hung, Min Aung Hlaing also held meetings with top Vietnamese firms such as VinFast, a local EV manufacturer, ​and the military-run telecoms group Viettel, which operates Mytel, one of Myanmar’s major telecom operators.

According to a Vietnamese government statement quoted by Reuters, a key focus of the talks between Lam and Min Aung Hlaing was defense and security cooperation, which the two leaders elevated to a key pillar of bilateral ties.

In particular, the two leaders “agreed to expand cooperation in military training, exchanges between young officers, search-and-rescue operations and ​disaster response, while stepping up information sharing and coordination ​against crimes,” the statement said.

“Vietnam stands ⁠ready to share its experience in national development, ensuring economic ​security and fostering sustainable growth,” the statement quoted Lam as saying during the talks.

Economics and trade were also high on the agenda. Trade between the two nations has fallen in recent years, as Myanmar has become engulfed in civil conflict. According to statistics cited by the Associated Press, two-way trade totaled $853 million in 2020 but then fell to $590 million in 2025.

Speaking at the Myanmar-Viet Nam Business Forum in Hanoi yesterday, Min Aung Hlaing called “for greater bilateral economic cooperation and increased Vietnamese investment in Myanmar,” the Global New Light of Myanmar reported. In particular, he said that Myanmar was “seeking to expand cooperation with Vietnam in telecommunications, technology, manufacturing, agriculture, energy, tourism and human resources development,” in the newspaper’s paraphrase.

Both sides also reaffirmed a commitment not to allow any individual or organization to use one country’s territory ​for activities against the other – a similar arrangement to the one that Lam made during his visit to Thailand in May.

During his meeting with Min Aung Hlaing on Saturday, Le Minh Hung “congratulated Myanmar on achieving significant results in national governance under the leadership of President Min Aung Hlaing,” Vietnamese state media reported. He also “affirmed Vietnam’s support for the Myanmar government in continuing to implement measures to promote stability, reconciliation, dialogue, economic development, and improve people’s lives.”

Vietnam was the eighth country that Min ‌Aung Hlaing has visited since taking office in April, and the third member state from ASEAN, with a fourth – Cambodia – to follow later this week. He has also paid visits to India, China, Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. In all of these places, he has sought to consolidate diplomatic relationships and to drum up foreign investment, as evidenced by the large business and political delegations that have accompanied him on each trip.

A top priority, which Min Aung Hlaing flagged in his inauguration speech in April, is to normalize relations with ASEAN, which since late 2021 has excluded the country from its summits over its failure to implement the bloc’s Five-Point Consensus conflict resolution plan. This plan calls for a cessation of violence, access to humanitarian aid, and inclusive dialogue involving “all parties” to the country’s conflict.

Myanmar’s government has rejected the Consensus, in both word and deed, while cultivating relations with those ASEAN member states most sympathetic to its reintegration into the 11-nation bloc.