Vietnam Faces Challenges in Implementing Development Strategies

 

Vietnam has just gone out of the list of poor countries but it should try more to gain sustainable development. The national economy’s infrastructure structure and competitiveness remains weak, meanwhile, the country is in need of qualified human resources and it still lags behind many regional countries in sci-tech development.

 

Homi Kharas from Brookings Institution said Vietnam mainly produces commercial and manufactured products, but its still has global competitiveness. Despite not falling into the “medium-income gap” to date, it may be listed among countries of this gap in the next decade. “It is vital to find out ways to avoid this”, Homi Kharas added.

 

Do Hoai Nam from the Vietnam Academy of Social Science said Vietnam needs to establish necessary foundations during the 2011-2020 strategy to succeed in shortening its development process, overcoming the “medium income gap” to turn into a developed industrialised country with high income level.

 

To reach the target, the Southeast Asian country should need a vision until 2050 by efforts to speed up development process and taking advantage of sci-tech achievements and globalisation. Based on the vision, Vietnam should have specific strategies for each 10-year period. “It is important to consider the 2011-2020 strategy as the first among the strategy chain to implement the vision, focusing on the application of the growth model for the human development along with economic restructure and job creation for rural labourers”, Nam noted.

Homi Kharas said it is necessary for Vietnam to change its growth strategy. Currently, its economic growth depends much on credit and big economic groups, instead of reform and creativeness.

 

Additionally, weaknesses of logistics sector and poor infrastructure are among the nation’s hot issues which should be dealt with urgently, especially realty speculation in big cities.

 

Homi Kharas emphasised that the top priorities of Vietnam are boosting industrial development, exports, foreign direct investment, urbanisation and infrastructure construction as well as state management improvement.

 

He also said Vietnam should have strategic plans to avoid the “medium income gap” and build dialogue mechanism on growth and risk. Particularly, the country should build comprehensive and consistent financial and macro-economic policies and control realty bubble and focus on job generation.

 

“Export is one of ways to raise sci-tech development. Therefore, Vietnam should conform to global practices for exports based on its natural resources. The country also needs to pay more attention to logistics development and goods classification”, Homi Kharas urged.

 

Nam said the most urgent task for Vietnam during the 2011-2020 is forming a sustainable for politics, culture, society and economy and human resources, which will serve as bases for the national development from 2011 and 2050.

 

“It is right time for Vietnam to make use of human resource advantage with internally-standard training programmes”, Nam highlighted.

 

Moreover, the nation needs to attach importance to poverty reduction to improve farmers’ living condition. This is an important foundation for socio-economic stability to implement the development strategies.

 

Vietnam should be more active to join the global value chain to fully develop its internal strength, helping local firms to absorb technology transfer from multi-national corporations and groups. Developing sea economy, key economic areas and economic zones are also urged. The Southeast Asian nation should gradually build large-scale businesses with limitless capital contribution by private and foreign firms.