Agricultural investment needs to be more targeted

On October 29, in Hanoi, Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai had a working session with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to evaluate the performance in the 2006-2010 period and discuss the implementation plan for 2012 and the 2011-2015 period.

Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai said the context of the 2011-2015 period is different from before, so new solutions are needed in agricultural development.

This period will face many greater challenges. That is the challenge of deeper and broader integration, so appropriate policies are needed to improve competitiveness and attract investment.

Climate change also impacts rural agriculture every day and every hour, so we must proactively respond now, not wait until 2100 as the scenario suggests. In addition, the agricultural sector also faces challenges from epidemics and low labor productivity...

Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai requested the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to continue to improve its organization in 2012 according to the new apparatus; review sectoral planning strategies and make timely adjustments accordingly. Programs and projects need to focus more on collective intelligence to maximize effectiveness.

The Ministry needs to review investment projects, prioritize them, and clearly identify which projects are likely to attract investment from other economic sectors. The Deputy Prime Minister suggested that the fisheries sector should strengthen public-private partnerships (PPP) to attract capital.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai, current social investment in agriculture is still low, only about 6-7%, so budget investment in agriculture in the coming period probably needs to be more selective, directional, as a "bait policy" to attract other resources for investment in the 2011-2015 period.

At the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai highly appreciated the achievements of the agricultural sector over the past 5 years.

According to the Deputy Prime Minister, the biggest achievement in this period is the innovation of thinking from managers to farmers in developing commodity agriculture and getting rich, leading to policy mechanisms that respond to that thinking, so the efficiency of the industry is improved, and its role is increasingly important.

However, there are still problems such as slow labor transfer; productivity, quality, and infrastructure do not meet requirements; rural people's income is still low...

Delegates from ministries and sectors also contributed many ideas to the development of the 2012 plan of the Ministry of Agriculture, the restructuring of the sector and the promotion of the policy of "linking 4 houses."

There are suggestions to raise the export turnover target of agricultural, forestry and fishery products to 28 billion USD (expected to reach 25 billion USD in 2011); allocate capital for some important targets from the beginning such as dikes, reservoir safety, etc.

According to Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat, in 2012, the sector strives for a GDP growth target of 2.3-2.6%; agricultural, forestry and fishery production value increasing from 3.9-4.3%; export turnover reaching 24 billion USD and forest coverage reaching 40.5%.

In addition, some key indicators will be kept stable, such as cultivating 7.58 million hectares of rice; output reaching 41.5 million tons, ensuring domestic consumption and exporting 6.5-7 million tons of rice; livestock industry growth from 6-6.5%, exploiting and cultivating about 5.2 million tons of aquatic products./.

(According to VNA/Vietnam+)