Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Ha Noi, April 19 (VNA) -- A press conference on the socio-economic achievements in the past 10 years of national renovation and the socio-economic development strategy for 2001-2010 was held at the press centre of the Ninth National Party Congress in Ha Noi on April 19.

Minister of Planning and Investment Tran Xuan Gia told Vietnamese and foreign mediamen that the targets of Viet Nam's 10-year strategy on national stabilization and socio-economic development had been basically obtained and that the country has got out of crisis and gradually overcome poverty and underdevelopment.

Viet Nam obtained important achievements of great significance. The country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP)rose more than two times over the past decade.

On economic development, Minister Gia spoke of the six important achievements: production and business developed markedly; internal accumulation from the economy increased considerably (from 2.9 percent in 1990 to 27 percent in 2000); the financial-monetary system made progress and was renewed; capital for socio-economic development highly increased (VND 632,000 billion); foreign trade developed remarkably (export value increased six times or the export growth rate trebled the country's GDP growth rate); and economic structure was improved.

On social development, the country obtained important achievements in developing education and training, science and technology, employment, hunger eradication and poverty reduction, culture and information, population and family planning and healthcare.

Minister Gia also pointed to the weaknesses, shortcomings and outstanding problems of the country in socio-economic development in the past 10 years.

Viet Nam's socio-economic development strategy for the 2001-2010 period has been defined as to accelerate national industrialization and modernization along the socialist line and build the foundation for the country to basically become an industrialized nation by 2020. The most important and difficult task is to industrialize and modernize agriculture and rural areas which plays the decisive role in the national industrialization and modernization process. On this matter, Gia proposed three tasks that must be carried out at the same time, namely to turn agriculture into a commodity economy with a high quality; to build and develop rural industry, services, businesses and improve the life of people in rural areas; and build rural infrastructure. To promote industrialization, and modernization in combination with building an independent economy while actively integrating into the world economy is a new point of the strategy.

The three breakthroughs defined by the strategy to promote socio-economic development are to build uniform market-oriented economic institutions in line with socialism with focus on renewal of policy to liberate the production force and expand markets at home and abroad; make a vigorous change in the development of human resources, focusing on education-training, science-technology; renew the organization and operation of the political system, focusing on administrative reform and the building of a pure and strong State.--VNA