While Hanoi and Kuwait City quietly turn up the sound on five decades of fellowship, diplomats are charting a new 21st-century game plan for partnership that reaches well beyond oil derricks to airports, halal eateries, student scholarships and fintech centres.
Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Minh Hang‘s recent working visit to Kuwait City on September 22 proved that the relationship is evolving into a self-consciously pragmatic phase: Kuwait — the first GCC country to have made diplomatic connections with Vietnam in 1976 and the GCC Chair in 2025 — wants to diversify its agenda from energy to trade, investment, tourism, and culture. The only variation this time is scale: Kuwaiti envoys made a blunt proposal to start negotiations on a GCC–Vietnam Free Trade Agreement that, if its negotiators act fast, could rewire Gulf-ASEAN trade.
Behind the sugar-coated diplomacy are firm carrots. Kuwait has emerged as Vietnam’s biggest investment and trade partner in the GCC, and the Kuwait Investment Authority has expressed interest in Vietnam’s booming market of up to 100 million consumers and global finance hubs of Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang. The message to the Kuwaiti capital: do look beyond hydrocarbons — agribusiness, halal certification, logistics and green technology are on the table.
Cultural diplomacy will have its turn as well. There was a commitment from both sides to organise high-level visits, mark direct flights, and co-host mutual cultural celebrations to mark next year’s 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties—an A-list party that can translate into more tourists, business delegations, and student exchanges (Kuwait will keep offering Arabic-language scholarships to Vietnamese students).
However, the Nghi Son refinery, a trilateral Vietnamese-Kuwaiti-Japanese project, remains on the agenda, with both governments reaffirming their commitment to ongoing dialogue to address outstanding issues. That said, the tone of the talks remains positive: Vietnam underscored multilateralism, economic self-reliance, and adherence to international law, while Kuwait underscored its GCC role as a bridge to ASEAN.
Why would casual readers care? Because this is the type of partnership that gradually reconfigures trade routes and investment flows; Halal food certification, which opens up Gulf supermarkets to Vietnamese exporters; direct flights, which turn weekend visitors into long-term investors; and sovereign wealth fund visits, which help grow tech parks and green projects. And if talks on the GCC–Vietnam FTA get serious, the ripple effect could redraw commercial routes from the Gulf to Southeast Asia. And the next 50th anniversary might focus less on ceremonies and more on the new chapter of an upgraded strategic partnership.
