Being active in joining the world’s integration plays an important role in enhancing resources for development and implementing industrialization and modernization. This is also one of major matters raised at the 12th Party Congress.
Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Tran Van Vinh is being interviewed at the 12th Party Congress
Joining the world’s integration is to promote the development and enhance the position of our country, but the top target is to bring more benefits to the nation and the people. Determining the position and status of the country will help Vietnam take proper and steady steps.
*Understand our position
Commissioner of the provincial Standing Committee of the Party cum Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Tran Van Vinh said that Vietnam has joined numerous free trade agreements, which has brought a long various markets and better competitive environment. Numerous opportunities such as bigger markets together with better incentives and policies also come with enormous challenges since the industry and agriculture of our country is not as developed as other member nations, labor productivity is not high enough, the quality and quantity of products are still limited, product brands are not widely available and popular in the markets.
“Big challenges do not mean that we cannot integrate. Therefore, opportunities and challenges always come together. If we can take advantages of the opportunities, we can create more motivation for strong and fast growth so that we can keep pace with other countries in the region as well as in the world” – emphasized comrade Tran Van Vinh.
Besides, in the paper presented at the 12th Party Congress, Deputy Prime Minister cum Minister of External Relations Pham Binh Minh stated that: for the past 5 years, we have achieved significant results; however, we are just at the stage of “joining and negotiating” and signing international and regional agreements. There still remains limitations in the implementation of integration. The awareness of officials of sectors and localities is not adequate and consistent; the cooperation is not efficient; the policy on implementing international agreements is not adequate and consistent; the domestic preparation for international agreements which are going to be implemented is still behind the schedule and not active, and especially, we have not thoroughly taken advantages of the world’s integration, focusing on economic integration.
Analyzing 5 causes affecting the integration progress of Vietnam, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh specially emphasized the competitiveness of Vietnamese enterprises in particular and the economy of Vietnam in general is still low and not enough to compete foreign enterprises, which causes some sectors to be affected due to open markets, drastic increase in import and decrease in budget revenues from import duties… The slow growth of labor productivity, investment attraction based on labor advantage and cheap premises cost, low energy cost have affected significantly the competitiveness of the economy as well as of domestic enterprises and products.
What should we do now?
Minister of Culture, Sport and Tourism Hoang Tuan Anh confirmed the role of culture has been more and more highly evaluated and respected by other countries. Culture has become one of the pillars of stable development and the motivation of modernization, a factor to promote the national combined strength. “How to build and develop Vietnamese culture and people efficiently in the context of market economy whereas maintaining the orientation of the socialist is a challenging and tough mission” – emphasized Minister Hoang Tuan Anh.
One of the solutions proposed by Minister Hoang Tuan Anh is to actively join the world’s integration in terms of culture, implementing the diversification of cultural diplomacy, tightening international cultural cooperation to achieve practical results.
As for agriculture, according to Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat, the competitiveness of agricultural production of Vietnam is relatively weak. Therefore, in order to improve the competitiveness, we need to consider 3 levels: the nation, enterprises and products. In the context of deep and wide integration and market mechanism, if we want to have fair chances to compete, we need to develop domestic strategic products, taking advantage of climatic and geographical conditions, socio-economic situations and production tradition.
“However, we are not only dependent on natural conditions and the people, we must also support the people to make strategic products with better productivity, quality and higher efficiency” – said Minister Cao Duc Phat.
According to experts, Vietnamese enterprises are still passive when joining international trade agreements. Therefore, there should be specific guidelines to support enterprises to understand and be active in making integration roadmap and avoiding unexpected confusion. Moreover, the connection and joint among enterprises play a very important role in strengthening the economy. The importance of unions must also be taken into account since this is the connection helping enterprises improve product quality and be active and confident to join the world’s large markets.
Nguyen Phuong
