Obstacles to economic development

The meeting took place as the domestic situation continues to see strong transformations, with a lot of positive results being achieved. The whole country is focusing on bringing its existing potential into full play, while maintaining macroeconomic stability, and boosting business and production, with the aim of ensuring sustainable economic development. In addition, efforts have also been accelerated to ensure social security; strengthen national defence, security and foreign affairs; safeguard national sovereignty; step up the fight against corruption; exercise thrift; and combat wastefulness.

Performing its responsibilities to the country, the legislature continued to focus on law building, considering and approving seven law projects alongside draft resolutions, while commenting on nine other laws. They are the important law projects and resolutions, aiming to further institutionalise the Party’s guidelines, especially the Resolutions of the Party Central Committee Plenums and the 2013 Constitution, towards protecting human rights and citizenship; strengthening national defence and security; reshuffling the State apparatus to make it more streamlined and efficient; and enhancing the prevention and fight against corruption and wastefulness. Notably, in the process of reviewing and discussing the draft Law on Special Administrative-Economic Units, the NA realised that this is a new and complicated field of various opinions, especially among the people. Therefore, the lawmakers decided to delay the adoption of the draft law in order to have more time for research and completion, aiming to ensure its quality and feasibility. Affirming that the legislators always listen to the people’s ideas, the NA has called on the people to put faith in the Party and State’s decisions, especially the currently discussed draft laws, while promoting solidarity and unity, eagerly emulating in labour and production, as well as living and working in line with the law, and joining hands to build a wealthier and more prosperous country.

The NA also scrutinised a number of other important issues arising in the country’s socio-economic development process, including reports on the additional evaluation of the implementation of the socio-economic development and state budget plans for 2017, the implementation of the socio-economic development and state budget plans in the first months of 2018, recommendations and proposals from the voters and people, and the supervision outcomes of the handling of the voters’ recommendations that were sent to the fourth session of the NA. Notably, the NA implemented its supreme supervision of the enforcement of laws and policies on the management and use of State capital and assets at businesses, and the equitisation of State-owned enterprises (SOEs). This is an issue that the public are concerned about and they have suggested that it requires strong reform and needs to be closely monitored in order to prevent State assets from being lost and wasted, while combating negative acts and group interests. On that basis, the NA deputies adopted a Resolution on the NA’s supervisory programme for 2019, and a Resolution on the establishment of the NA’s supreme supervision team on the two issues of public and voters’ concern, including the implementation of policies and laws on urban land planning, management and use, and the implementation of policies and laws on fire prevention and fighting.

The fifth meeting of the NA continued to show renovations in terms of the methods of conducting the question & answer sessions, with a focus on face-to-face debates and dialogues over the issues with different opinions. The groups of issues chosen by the NA for the sessions were the important socio-economic issues of the public and voters’ concern. The Q&A sessions took place in a democratic, vibrant, straightforward and responsible atmosphere. The reforms in the Q&A sessions – brief questions and answers – brought about positive results, receiving appraisal from both the NA deputies and voters.

At the fifth meeting, the NA demonstrated the spirit that the whole country continues to build on the achievements; deeply understands the spirit of “discipline, integrity, action, creativity, and efficiency”; continues to drastically and synchronously implement the tasks and solutions set out in the resolutions of the Party, QH and Government; and proactively keep a close eye on the developments of the international and domestic situations in order to apply appropriate and timely responses. In addition, focus has been placed on settling any arising problems, overcoming shortcomings and weaknesses, removing difficulties and obstacles, researching suitable policies to boost the potential and advantageous areas, improving the business climate and enhancing national competitiveness, aiming to create motivation for socio-economic development.

The legislature asked the Government, levels, agencies, organisations, and localities throughout the country to design plans to effectively implement the newly adopted resolutions, ensuring the NA’s decisions are implemented in a comprehensive and effective manner in the socio-economic life of the country. The NA deputy delegations and NA deputies themselves should organise the meetings with voters to deeply grasp their ideas and legitimate aspirations and convey them to the NA, Government, and authorised agencies in a timely fashion. The NA requested the Government to promptly and strictly handle any acts of law violation.

With a high sense of responsibility before the people, the fifth session of the 14 ^th NA came to a successful end with a lot of highlights, leaving a deep impression among the people and voters nationwide. The Vietnamese people, both at home and abroad, should uphold the spirit of patriotic emulation and solidarity, while putting faith in the Party and State’s leadership, bringing into full play the internal power, while taking advantage of opportunities and overcoming difficulties and challenges, in order to successfully fulfill the socio-economic development plans. This will be an important foundation for the whole Party, Army and people to propel the country through all hardships and make breakthroughs in the new period.

Thanks to the careful and scientific preparations, the meeting ensured high quality and the completion of the set plans, deeply demonstrating a sense of high responsibility for national development and the happiness of the people. This is an important basis for the legislature to determine the methods of its following meeting towards suitability, practicality and efficiency.

The NA’s 10th session took place in the context of the international and domestic situation witnessing unpredictable developments that have strongly affected many aspects of the social life. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and re-emerged on a global scale, pushing the world economy into recession while adversely affecting the implementation of socio-economic development tasks in the country. In addition, extreme weather conditions and natural disasters, especially hot weather, droughts, thunderstorms, landslides and floods in the northern mountainous, central and Central Highlands provinces, and saltwater intrusion and the lack of fresh water in the Mekong Delta region, have caused heavy damage to production and people’s lives. There are still shortcomings in the country’s economic structure, with the intrinsic capacity and the ability to resist against and adapt to strong external changes remaining limited.

Given these difficulties and challenges, with the bright leadership of the Party, the companionship of the NA, the drastic and proper administration of the Government, and especially the consensus and solidarity of the whole political system, levels, sectors, businesses and the people, Vietnam has developed a number of drastic solutions in controlling the pandemic, mitigating the impact of natural disasters, and overcoming shortcomings, thus striving to promote socio-economic recovery and development. As a result, many clear and impressive achievements have been attained, including maintaining macroeconomic stability, putting inflation under control, ensuring social order and safety, stabilising people’s lives, and guaranteeing social security. However, the country still faces numerous difficulties and challenges.

The top tasks and goals in the time ahead are to continue overcoming existing difficulties and drastically implement breakthrough solutions to preserve and promote the obtained accomplishments. With that in mind, the 10th session showed the spirit of frankness in proposing important solutions for the benefit of the people and the country.

The NA spent time considering and reviewing the results of the implementation of socio-economic development plans, while objectively and comprehensively evaluating the year 2020 and the whole tenure and forecasting the evolution trends of the disease and the political and socio-economic situation of the world and the region in the coming period, thereby determining directions and measures to boost socio-economic development in a more sustainable manner, improve the people’s lives, maintain socio-political stability, firmly safeguard independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and strengthen friendly cooperation with countries and international organisations. The NA considered and adopted seven laws and 13 resolutions, and commented on four other law projects, while examining reports synthesizing voters’ opinions and recommendations, and many other important reports and documents. Lawmakers discussed and commented on the draft documents to be submitted to the 13th National Party Congress, decided on the national election day for the election of deputies to the 15th NA and the People’s Councils at all levels (2021-2026 term), and implemented personnel work.

NA deputies reviewed reports and conducted a question and answer (Q&A) session concerning the implementation of the NA’s resolutions on thematic monitoring and questioning in the 14 ^th tenure, and some resolutions in the 13 ^th term. The Q&A session was considered the first step in carrying out the end-of-term summarisation and evaluation of the NA’s supervisory work. The Deputy Prime Minister and 15 ministers and heads of sectors directly answered questions regarding issues under their management responsibilities. The Prime Minister elaborated on several contents under the Government’s responsibilities and responded to questions from NA deputies. The session showed that many contents and requests of the people’s legitimate concerns have yet to be definitely resolved, while many hot issues which are facing obstacles need to be further addressed. In addition, some issues have seen little change despite having been raised by deputies several times.

From the results of the session, the NA and the Government agreed on many important objectives and tasks in the near future, with a focus on effectively realising the “dual goal” of combating the disease and boosting socio-economic recovery and development; strongly promoting economic restructuring associated with renovating the growth model, enhancing the productivity, quality, efficiency, self-reliance and competitiveness of the economy, and strongly development the domestic market; accelerating the progress of important projects and key nation works; promoting the role of key economic regions and big cities; accelerating digital transformation, the development of the digital economy and the building of a digital society. In addition, priority will be given to developing high-quality human resources associated with science-technology development, innovation and creativity; strongly upholding the cultural values and intellectual of Vietnamese people; effectively performing the tasks of socio-cultural development, ensuring social security and people’s lives, environmental protection, natural disaster and disease prevention and control, and climate change adaptation; and strengthening national defence and security. Foreign affairs and international integration will also be facilitated, in addition to safeguarding independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and a peaceful and stable environment, and improving the country’s position and prestige in the international arena.

With a highly responsible working spirit in front of voters and the people, the 10th session of the 14 ^th legislature ended successfully with specific results, leaving many deep imprints in the social life. This will be an important foundation for the whole country to continue to unite under the leadership of the Party and State to overcome challenges and rise strongly.

He said there are many things that need to be done to turn science-technology into the driver and a source of power of the economy, but the first task is to digitalise and use information technology to enable connectivity in management. Obstacles in financial mechanism should also be removed, the Deputy PM added.

Minister of Science and Technology Huynh Thanh Dat affirmed that the ministry will continue to work with relevant agencies to build specific mechanisms for developing science-technology.

Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Le Xuan Dinh reported at the meeting that science and technology has contributed greatly to national development, as seen in the growing contribution of the total factor productivity (TFP) to national economic growth, from an average 33.6% in the 2011-2015 period to 45.2% in the 2016-2020. The country’s Global Innovation Index (GII) was ranked 42nd among 131 countries and territories, third in ASEAN and topped the group of nations with the same level of income.

The country has begun to form an innovative startup ecology with around 3,000 innovative startups, which attracted approximately US$1 billion of investment in the past two consecutive years.

Investment in science-technology now comes from both the State budget (52%) and businesses (48%) instead of relying entirely on the State like 10 years ago.