Signaling a Vietnam that will 'escape the middle class and reach the high-speed highway' in the near future

In recent years of innovation, Vietnam has made every effort to build highways, airports, 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, including some sections that were built early and some that were built later. Thus, the weakest area of ​​transportation, the railway, has not been able to continue to lie still. Vietnam's transportation infrastructure has never had such comprehensive and outstanding development as it does now and in the next few years.

A corner of Ho Chi Minh City. Illustration photo

Compared to transportation, information is behind but ahead in modernization, approaching the world highway. Just from the beginning of the 20th century until now, generation 2.0 has been eliminated, generation 3.0 is eliminated even faster by 4.0, and generation 5.0 is about to usurp the throne of 4.0 which is not yet hot. Vietnam's information infrastructure has never been modernized as quickly as it has achieved today.

On February 12, 2020, the European Parliament approved the EVFTA Free Trade Agreement after many years of negotiations. This agreement, along with 12 other FTAs ​​that Vietnam has signed and is in effect, including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), has opened the country's trade avenue to a series of G7 and G20 countries across Asia, Europe, America, and Australia. Some people in the world have said that Vietnam is becoming a geopolitical power. Vietnam's foundation in terms of trade and geopolitical space has never been as open and sustainable as it is today.

Thus, the country's information, transportation and trade highways are ready for the Vietnamese economy to accelerate in production and circulation of its goods and services to all regions of the country; at the same time, carry out exports and imports with most of the United Nations member countries.

For countries that have FTAs ​​with Vietnam, zero tariffs will be applied to most goods and services as soon as the agreement comes into effect, and the rest will continue to be applied in the following years. In order to be able to accelerate when the above highways are opened, the domestic business system cannot continue to "feel the stones to cross the river" with businesses that are forever "small, medium and small" as in the past years.

First of all, 5 million rural households must quickly have institutions to become business farms in the modern agricultural sector. These farms do not need "massive scale" of land like previous farms and plantations. The farms only need a sufficient scale to implement the method of "farming like gardening". This scale and method have been and are being implemented effectively in the global value chain in many localities in growing flowers, fruits, medicinal herbs, short-term industrial crops, and even growing rice with the highest quality in the world in Long An.

If 5 million family economic households are transformed into modern agricultural business farms, the "New Countryside" will accelerate on the information, transportation, and trade avenues that have been opened. It requires a suitable mechanism for 5 million family economic households in rural areas, first of all, the promulgation of a law on this type of enterprise. That law, together with other State initiatives, will be the necessary and sufficient method so that agriculture - farmers - rural areas are no longer a low-yield area, of good harvests but low prices, and of the disadvantaged having to take the last carriage of the Vietnamese economic train.

For the 800,000 existing private enterprises (PIEs), and the one or two million that will exist in the near future, there needs to be an institution to make this sector an important driving force of the economy. Accordingly, it is time to leave behind the incorrect views about PIEs, which even placed this sector in opposition to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) during the planning period. And it is also time to put domestic private economic groups on par with foreign economic groups.

Over the past two decades, the State has succeeded in a difference from many Asian countries by rolling out the red carpet to invite foreign economic groups to invest and do business in Vietnam. Now, a second red carpet needs to be rolled out to honor and create the birth, growth and effective operation of domestic private economic groups. By doing so, once again, Vietnam puts its economy on the highways of information, transportation and trade with both foreign economic groups and domestic private economic groups.

For over a thousand SOEs, it is time to leave behind the "snail" pace of equitization that has plagued them for decades. Accordingly, this slow pace must be a focus for handling. The equitization process has dragged on for too long and needs to be completed at a "high speed" to quickly release several trillion VND of capital stagnant in these enterprises, providing for the urgent needs of the capital-hungry economy, while avoiding the State from having to take on more debt and liabilities.

More than ever, on the basis of the information - transportation - trade highways that have been opened, state management of the economy operating on those highways also needs to be innovated in a "high-speed" way.

Accordingly, the system should not always be in a state of needing to mobilize to carry out small and large tasks as it has been for a long time; the cumbersome and overlapping apparatus cannot continue to be restructured at the slow pace as has been seen in the past decades; the personnel apparatus cannot be unfiltered to avoid "elephants passing through the eye of a needle" as has been seen.

These realities are clearly incompatible with the high-speed platforms that have been opened. To clean up the above mess, the "things to do immediately" method proposed and implemented by the late General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh in the early years of renovation now needs to be reused, first of all for: reducing deputy levels, reducing steering committees, reducing special working groups, reducing ministerial-level agencies, reducing general departments, reducing the duplication of names between local departments, branches and sectors with central ministries, branches and sectors, and making the Fatherland Front a common home for associations and unions.

Vietnam's fortunes have never been as good as they are today; the country is on the rise; the time has come; the shortcomings, shortcomings, and weaknesses have been clearly seen; the 13th National Party Congress is being comprehensively prepared. All of these signal a Vietnam that will "escape the middle class and reach the highway" in the near future. We need to prepare the vehicles to travel on those highways.