Officials meet to discuss economy restructuring

HÀ NỘI — Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc on Thursday chaired the first meeting of the national steering committee on restructuring the economy to work out plans to refresh the country’s growth model for the next two years.

Cabinet ministers, officials from the National Assembly, locality leaders and economists gathered for the first time to review the implementation of the Government’s action programme on realising resolutions on growth model reform adopted by the Party Central Committee and the National Assembly over the past one and a half years.

In the meeting, Phúc has tasked the committee with seeking ways to create new momentum for the national economy. 

He said that ministries, agencies and localities should change their viewpoints and actions, thus creating breakthroughs to improve productivity, quality, efficiency and competitiveness, describing this as a decisive factor to make the national economy develop sustainably and avoid lagging behind. 

The PM also emphasised the need to focus on revamping State management comprehensively and continue efforts in building the Government that works effectively. 

Growth quality has been improved over the past time, with contributions of the total factor productivity (TFP) increasing from 33 percent during 2011-15 to 40.68 per cent in 2016 and 45.19 per cent last year, he said. 

In a report presented by planning and investment minister Nguyễn Chí Dũng, only a quarter of missions (25.8 per cent) were carried out with clear positive results. Some 57.8 per cent of ongoing missions have yet to gain any visible achievements while 16.7 per cent are behind schedule or yet to be rolled out.

Many achieved missions fell in groups of policies to stabilise the macro economy, to restructure State-owned enterprises, to improve the economic mechanism and to restructure public investment.

The Central Institute for Economic Management head Nguyễn Đình Cung said the Government should focus on how to complete more than 50 per cent of unfinished missions by 2020. It should also prepare to respond to emerging factors, for example the trade war between the US and China.

He also proposed seeking new driving forces right in the domestic economy, explaining that if Hà Nội, HCM City and the central city of Đà Nẵng grow 1 per cent each, the national economy would expand by 0.5 per cent.

National Assembly Committee on Economic Affairs Vice Chairman Nguyễn Đức Kiên, meanwhile, stressed the importance of the Industry 4.0 for the country’s future economic growth.

“We need to protect the domestic market, uphold the export ones and increase the economy’s efficiency on the ground of the development of Industry 4.0,” he said.

State Bank of Việt Nam Governor Lê Minh Hưng agreed on the need to integrate the fourth industrial revolution into the economy. He suggested that the Government come up with new policies and mechanism to aid the implementation of digital instruments in investment into the production sector and market expansion.

Minister of Industry and Trade Trần Tuấn Anh pointed out labour productivity as the weakest chain of the economy due to low quality of human resources and subpar technology.

Hà Nội People’s Committee Chairman Nguyễn Đức Chung said that to solve the labour productivity issue, the Government should seek technology transfer from advanced countries and invest more in education.

According to the Government, a successful restructuring of the economy will help the growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP) reach 7.47 per cent a year in the 2018-20 period and stand at a high rate during 2021-25. — VNS