Socialist Republic of Vietnam

(VNA) Implementing well three strategic breakthroughs set by the 11th National Party Congress is the central task of the Government during its 2011-2016 tenure, stressed Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.

In his recent article, the Government leader wrote the first breakthrough is to complete the socialist-oriented market economic institution, focusing on creating an equally competitive environment and implementing administrative reforms.

In the 2011-2016 term, the Government should continue perfecting mechanisms and policies to create the synchronous and smooth operation of goods, service, financial, securities, real estate, labour and science and technology markets, helping increase their competitiveness and better connection to the world market, he noted.

The synchronous formation of the market economic institution should couple with minimising the monopoly in the production and service sectors and creating an equal environment for all economic sectors, he added.

The Government should clearly define sectors with high exclusive rights to have suitable polices and measures, creating conditions for the private sector to participate in business activities, stated PM Dung, who emphasised the need to speed up the reform of State-owned enterprises, putting them into an equal competition with other economic sectors with the removal of the existing forms of preferences and subsidy, and making their operations transparent under criteria for listed firms on the stock market.

He also stressed the necessity of changing the way of thinking and approaching when defining the State’s role and the relationship between the State and the market.

“We should strongly shift from the State monitoring the economy to the State creating development in which the function of the State is to build development plans under a sound modernisation and industrialisation strategy, create conditions for economic sectors to promote their potentialities in a competitive environment and international integration, and strengthen supervision to detect possible imbalances, ensuring macroeconomic stability and the safety of the economic system,” Dung wrote.
Therefore, the 11 th National Party Congress defined that creating an equally competitive environment and implementing administrative reforms are focuses in the institutional breakthrough, he stressed.

According to the PM, the second breakthrough set by the 11 th National Party Congress is to rapidly develop human resources, especially high-quality human resources, in combination with scientific and technological development and application.

“The 2011-2020 strategy emphasised the need to attach special importance to developing contingents of proficient leaders, experts and business managers, skilled workers, and well-trained scientists and technologists,” he wrote.

Human resource training must meet the diversification and multi-layer requirements of the technology and the development level of industries, he noted, adding that there should be a close connection between businesses, labour using establishments, training bases and the State to develop human resources in accordance with social demands.

The PM wrote that the Government needs to implement high-quality human resource training programmes and projects for key industries and sectors while attaching importance to discovering, nurturing and promoting talented persons as well as training human resources for the development of the knowledge-based economy.

The plan highlights human resource development, especially high quality personnel, to make science-technology applicable to the development cause. It is aimed at converting human knowledge into scientific and technological applicability and creativeness- a key momentum to fast and sustainable development.

In the 2011-16 office term, the Government will conduct a strong renewal in all fields of science and technology, from institutional structure to managerial and operating mechanisms. Science and technology will largely serve industrialisation and modernisation as well as shifting the model of growth. It all aims to contribute to increasing the productivity, quality, efficiency and competitiveness of the national economy. Stimuli will be issued to encourage enterprises to apply advanced technology with priorities to be given to material and energy savers as well as environmentally-friendly technology for a green economy.

Dung also calls for construction of a comprehensive infrastructure system with some modern projects in the highlight, focusing on the traffic system and metropolis.

He points out four major factors for the infrastructure construction for the 201-15 period as follows:

First of all, investment should focus on the North-South Highway while priorities should be given to regions with huge cargo volumes, dynamic hubs and those projects that promote transport connectivity among national regions as well as the nation with other regions and the world as a whole.

It’s necessary to modernise and increase capacity of services in three major sea ports in the three parts of the country, namely Hai Phong in the north, Ho Chi Minh City-Vung Tau in the south and the Mien Trung (central) seaport, thus establishing major marine economic hubs. Investment in rural infrastructure should be associated with improving the rural social and cultural life. Steps should be taken to address burning issues in production, transport and flash flooding prevention in mountainous and ethnic minority-populated areas.

Secondly, investment should intensify the upgrading and modernising of infrastructure systems for metropolis in a comprehensive way alongside restructuring production and reallocating residential quarters. It is urgent to develop the urban transport system, especially public transport, while solving traffic jams and flooding problems in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City .

Thirdly, it is necessary to develop power generation and transmission networks along with the application of energy-saving technology in order to meet demand for energy in production and daily life.

Fourthly, investment should be spent in developing the irrigation system in a comprehensive and modern way while focus should be laid on building and strengthening sea and river dykes, water-pumping stations, reservoirs and dams to prevent saline from infiltration and drain flooding water. More natural disaster control projects and shelters for ships should be built to mitigate damages for people. The information and communication sector as well as information technology infrastructure are in need to get modernised to meet demand for development and contribute to increasing productivity./.