A day after Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung successfully concluded his official visit to Cambodia, many leading newspapers in the country ran articles highlighting its positive results.

A leading Khmer language newspaper said that Vietnam’s investment in Cambodia has seen a sharp increase in both scale and amount. It shows Vietnam’s potential for helping Cambodia by providing capital, generating jobs, transferring technologies, and training human resources in order to promote production and increase the country’s competitiveness.

PM Dung’s visit showed how the two countries have coordinated to take advantage of the investment potential and promote their socio-economic development, it said.

The Cambodia Daily, one of the two biggest English language newspapers in Cambodia, provided detailed information about Mr. Dung’s visit, and the signing of a number of investment projects in hydroelectricity, sugarcane and rubber cultivation and processing, and mining.

It cited Cambodian Minister of Commerce Cham Prasith as saying that thanks to the high quality and reasonable prices of Vietnamese products, the country’s export revenue to Cambodia reached US$1.55 billion in 2010. He believes it will exceed US$2 billion in 2011.

Meanwhile, the Phnom Penh Post newspaper stated that Vietnam’s investment in Cambodia plays an important role in the country’s foreign investment attraction, especially in agriculture, infrastructure, industrial exports, oil and gas, mining, and tourism.

The newspaper quoted Professor Cheng Kimlong from the University of Cambodia as saying that the agreements signed during the PM’s visit show the strong trade relationship between the two countries.

Vietnamese investors have showed their outstanding capacity to hold the major market share of agricultural production and business.

The Phnom Penh Post also published a commentary by Peter Brimble, the ADB Cambodia senior country economist, which said the agreements indicate Vietnam’s strong commitment to promoting investment in Cambodia.

There is no doubt that Vietnam will play an increasingly important role in Cambodia, Brimble says in the commentary.

The value of Vietnam-Cambodia trade in the first quarter of 2011 increased by 50 percent over the same period last year.