Signaling Vietnam's potential to 'escape middle-income status and achieve high-speed status' in the near future.

In recent years of reform, Vietnam has strived to develop highways, air routes, and seaports as quickly as possible. In May 2020, the Government will submit to the National Assembly the North-South High-Speed ​​Railway project, after many years of preparation, with some sections to be built earlier and others later. Thus, even the most underdeveloped area of ​​transportation – the railway – is no longer at rest. Vietnam's transportation infrastructure has never experienced such comprehensive and remarkable development as it does now and in the next few years.

A view of Ho Chi Minh City. (Illustrative image)

Compared to transportation, information technology, though lagging behind, has nevertheless surpassed it in modernization, catching up to the world's fastest pace. From the beginning of the 20th century to the present, Generation 2.0 has been eliminated, Generation 3.0 has been replaced even faster by Generation 4.0, and Generation 5.0 is poised to usurp the position of Generation 4.0 even before it has fully taken its place. Vietnam's information technology infrastructure has never been modernized as rapidly as it has been today.

On February 12, 2020, the European Parliament approved the EVFTA free trade agreement after years of negotiations. This agreement, along with 12 other FTAs ​​that Vietnam has signed and is currently in effect, including the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), has opened up trade avenues for the country to numerous G7 and G20 nations across Asia, Europe, America, and Australia. Some in the world have argued that Vietnam is becoming a geopolitical powerhouse. Vietnam's potential in terms of trade and geopolitical space has never been as vast and sustainable as it is today.

Thus, the country's information, transportation, and trade highways are ready for the Vietnamese economy to accelerate its production, circulation of goods and services throughout the country; and at the same time, to conduct import and export with most United Nations member states.

For countries with FTAs ​​with Vietnam, zero tariffs are implemented for most goods and services immediately upon the agreement's entry into force, with the remainder to be implemented over several years. To accelerate growth now that these "highways" have been opened, the domestic business system cannot continue to "cross the river by feeling its way across" with businesses that remain perpetually "small, medium, and tiny" as they have been in recent years.

First and foremost, the 5 million rural households must quickly establish themselves as commercial farms within the modern agricultural sector. These farms do not require the "massive scale" of land like the previous large farms and plantations. A farm of sufficient size is sufficient to implement the "farming like gardening" method. This scale and method have been and are being implemented effectively in the global value chain in many localities for growing flowers, fruits, medicinal herbs, short-term industrial crops, and even producing world-class quality rice in Long An.

If 5 million household businesses are transformed into modern agricultural enterprises, the "New Rural Development" program will accelerate along the opened information, transportation, and trade highways. This requires appropriate mechanisms for these 5 million rural household businesses, starting with the enactment of a law governing this type of enterprise. This law, along with other state initiatives, will be the necessary and sufficient means to ensure that agriculture, farmers, and rural areas are no longer a low-productivity zone, plagued by bumper harvests but falling prices, and where vulnerable groups are relegated to the rear of Vietnam's economic train.

For the 800,000 existing private enterprises (PEs), and the one or two million more expected in the near future, institutions are needed to make this sector a crucial driving force of the economy. Accordingly, it's time to leave behind outdated views on PEs, which even pitted them against state-owned enterprises (SOEs) during the planned economy era. It's also time to place domestic private economic groups on par with foreign economic groups.

For over two decades, the Vietnamese government has successfully, unlike many other Asian countries, rolled out the red carpet to attract foreign corporations to invest and do business in Vietnam. Now, a second red carpet needs to be rolled out to honor and foster the birth, growth, and effective operation of domestic private corporations. By doing so, Vietnam will once again propel its economy forward on the high-speeds of information, transportation, and trade, utilizing both foreign and domestic private corporations.

For over a thousand state-owned enterprises (SOEs), it's time to leave behind the "snail's pace" of privatization that has plagued them for decades. This slow pace must be prioritized for resolution. The privatization process has dragged on for too long and needs to be completed at a "high speed" to quickly release several trillion dong of capital currently tied up in these enterprises, providing for the urgent needs of a capital-starved economy, while simultaneously preventing the State from incurring further debt.

More than ever, building upon the established information, transportation, and trade highways, state management of the economy operating on these highways also needs to be reformed at an "high-speed" pace.

Accordingly, the system should not always be in a state of needing mobilization to carry out everything from small tasks to large ones, as has been the case for a long time; the cumbersome and overlapping bureaucracy cannot continue to be restructured at the slow pace seen in recent decades; and the personnel system cannot afford to go unchecked to avoid the "elephant passing through the eye of a needle" situation that has been observed.

These realities are clearly incompatible with the high-speed platforms that have been opened. To clean up the mess mentioned above, the "things to do immediately" approach proposed and implemented by the late General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh in the early years of reform should now be reused, first and foremost for: reducing the number of deputy positions, reducing the number of steering committees, reducing the number of special task forces, reducing the number of ministerial-level agencies, reducing the number of general departments, reducing the number of departments and agencies with the names of ministries and agencies at the central level, and making the Vietnam Fatherland Front the common home for all associations and organizations.

Vietnam's fortunes have never been as high as they are today; the nation is on the rise; the opportune moment has arrived; existing shortcomings and weaknesses are clearly visible; and the 13th National Congress of the Party is being comprehensively prepared. All of this signals a Vietnam that will "escape the middle class and reach the high speed" in the near future. We need to prepare the vehicles to travel on those high speeds.