International Conference: Economic Reforms for inclusive and sustainable growth International Experiences and Lessons for Vietnam

The conference has more than 150 representatives including policy makers of various ministries, industries, provinces and cities; researchers from national institutes; local enterprises (private and governmental);  ambassadors of G20’s and ASEAN’s countries; representatives of UN as well as international financial institutions so on.

As being President of VASS, Prof. Dr. Nguyen Xuan Thang had greeted the participation of representatives and given the evaluation: Conference was held at the point of time when many governmental units were doing the summarization after 30 years of reforms. Therefore, the conference had an important role in enriching the input for this summary as well as building orientations, mechanisms, and policies for Vietnam in next period.

The President also expressed that he expected the conference would focus on analyzing Vietnam’s challenges in next period by maintaining the rapid and inclusive growth as well as suggesting some specific orientations of how to reform the mechanism and policies so that Vietnam could maintain its sustainable growth.

Having speech at the conference, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs – Mr. Pham Binh Minh has expressed his evaluation.  For him, Vietnam could be a country with average income is the great effort of whole country in the past 30 years of reforms. However, it required to more strongly change the thought and developing vision as well as the determination of the whole economy so that Vietnam could overcome the trap of average income and head to the sustainable and inclusive economy”. The Minister suggested some issues that conference should focus on, such as:  keep promoting the role of state in the relation with other subjects of the market economy which is integrating deeply with the world; build a modern economic structure to improve the sustainable and inclusive ability;  to sort out the relationship between macroeconomic settlement in short term with organizational structure in mid and long term;  role and position of agriculture toward the sustainable and inclusive growth; and what to do in the trend of linking economies so that Vietnam can join in and make use of the benefits of a series of values and global production.

Many related issues were discussed and analyzed including: Economic Reforms: Challenges for the inclusive growth; Economic reforms for a sustainable and inclusive growth; Improving the international competitive ability: Development of industry, agriculture and rural; Exploring the potential of international integration and regions for a sustainable and inclusive growth... Most of opinions have focused on strengthening the definition and importance of inclusive growth; defining the relationship between economic growth, inequality and economic mechanisms.  Some other topics which were discussed in the conference are prior reforms, how to balance between settling down the macroeconomic in short term and solutions and mechanism in mid and long term; what are challenges and opportunities as well as experiences and international lessons for Vietnam; They also discuss about changes of production values and network of the region and the world under the impacts of integration and economy connection. Also, they focused on the meaning of these changes to Vietnam, challenges and opportunities together with solutions to maximize the benefits of integration. The purpose of these talks is to resolve the issue of how other countries could use the integration with region as a way to improve the inclusive and sustainable growth ?

After 30 years of reforms, there are two core concepts have been improved. The first one is the transition from the centralized economy to the market economy and international economic integration. Its nature is the change from a closed economy to an opening and integrated economy. Vietnam’s economy is still in unsustainable growth with a low quality, productivity and competition.  There are many working labor but the rate of those who did not have training are quite high. A part of population is  still difficult, especially those are minority ethnics and living in remote regions. Challenges from environments, climate changes, disaster and diseases also require more resources and ability to overcome.  

Regarding to the development pathway in Vietnam, Mrs. Helen Clark – Administrator of United Nations Development Programme has strengthened that the sustainable and inclusive development pathway could win over the poverty as well as improve the human development.   First of all, it is necessary to implement solutions to improve the working efficiency and quality in the agriculture and fishery as an organic part in the growth strategy of the country; Secondly, to strongly improve the economy with high value industries so that Vietnam can set up its new competitive advantages in the regional economy and the world economy and career opportunities. There are more chances to be created through accessing to the high quality education and focusing on investments to projects which could be able to reduce disaster and adapt to the climate change.  They are important points of strategies for inclusive and sustainable growth.  A good distribution and human resource management play an important role in maximizing the impacts of development on national human resource. 

Besides, the researches and learning from foreign experiences will help to complete the market economy’s mechanism, develop the human resource with high quality and modernize the infrastructure so that Vietnam could become a modernized industrial country until 2020. They are also solutions to successfully implement the development strategies of Vietnam.

Having speech at the conference, Mr. Nicholas Rosellini – Deputy Assistant Administrator, Deputy Regional Director Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific UNDP has had the congratulation to the success of the conference. He said that the conference was held in time and suitable for Vietnam’s circumstance when this country is doing review for the 30 years of reforms.  By specific approaching methods, the assignments of conference has given an overall picture of the Vietnam’s economic circumstance and suggested the solutions to complete the mechanism, reduce inequality, improve the transparency and the importance of changing thoughts, and lessons from neighbor countries as Indonesia and Thailand...; Analyzing issues which Vietnam is facing up with during the period of defining the governmental and private business sectors. He also confirmed that UNDP will keep supporting Vietnam to improve the public administration and the human development, especially for remote regions to achieve a better and more sustainable life for all people by his experiences. 

Pham Vinh Ha