Ten years ago, when evaluating the results of the implementation of Conclusion 20-KL/TW, the Politburo assessed that "Nghe An is still a poor province". A full decade later (2013-2023), through the implementation of Resolution No. 26 NQ/TW, Nghe An has achieved many important and meaningful results in many aspects, but the province has not yet established a trend of outstanding development, a prominent regional position, commensurate with the role of "center of the North Central region" assigned to it; even in terms of economy, Nghe An is at risk of "falling behind" compared to some provinces in the region. The Politburo assessed: "Nghe An is still a province with many difficulties, unable to balance the budget".
Up to now, although the GRDP scale is in the top 10 of the country, Nghe An only ranks 2nd in the North Central and Central Coast regions. Although the budget revenue has exceeded the 20 trillion VND mark, it has not yet balanced revenue and expenditure (in 2022, the state budget expenditure in the province is about 32.5 trillion VND). According to the recent announcement of the General Statistics Office (at the 2022 Population Living Standards Survey), the average monthly income per capita in Nghe An has only reached 3,629 million VND, ranking 42/63 provinces and cities, ranking 9/14 provinces in the North Central and Central Coast regions; while the average figure for the whole country is 4.67 million VND. The announcement of the results of the review of poor and near-poor households in 2022 according to the multidimensional poverty standards for the period 2022-2025 by the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs in early 2023 also showed that Nghe An's multidimensional poverty rate is 12.62%, higher than the national average (7.52%).
Assessing the current economic situation of Nghe An, economic experts said: Nghe An's economic growth rate is not high enough to create a breakthrough, "turn around" the position and fundamentally change the development trajectory of the province. The area and population are large, but the income of the people is low, so the economic scale in general is still small, not enough to create a "worthy" scale advantage to be able to fully develop. This is one of the main objective reasons explaining why in the early stages of the new development trajectory, Nghe An has difficulty and is slow to make a breakthrough like other provinces.
In particular, enterprises are considered the "backbone" of any economy, but from the actual figures, although the province's business environment has improved significantly in recent years, it seems that Nghe An still does not have a truly effective strategy to solve the most important problem of the market economy, which is enterprise development. Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cung - former Director of the Central Institute for Economic Management Research assessed: The scale of enterprises in Nghe An in general is still very small in all criteria: Business capital, value of fixed assets and long-term investment, sales, number of employees and pre-tax profits. Most enterprises focus on operating in industries that use simple labor and require little capital.
The province's business force is still small and weak, accounting for only 1.4% of the total number of enterprises nationwide as of 2021. The province still lacks strong enterprises and economic groups that are pillars of development in a number of fields to create a leading position in development and attract investment. The growth rate of newly established enterprises is very slow, only about 1%, while the whole country is 7.4%. The structure of the industrial and service sectors is also quite fragmented and dispersed. Efforts to develop supporting industries to create a chain of typical industrial products have not been successful so far, partly due to the lack of leading enterprises.
During the 10 years of implementing Resolution No. 26 - NQ/TW, objectively, the international and domestic situation had times that were not favorable for local development such as: The prolonged consequences of the global economic crisis in 2009 - 2010, the internal difficulties of the national economy in the period of 2011 - 2015, the environmental pollution incident in the central coastal region in 2016 and the recent Covid-19 pandemic have negatively affected the completion of the province's development goals.
Subjectively, according to experts, the creation of opportunities for Nghe An to break through and develop from the Central Government and the taking advantage of opportunities to have superior mechanisms, policies and breakthrough solutions from Nghe An province are still slow, without synchronous coordination from both sides.
A typical example is that after 8 years of implementing Resolution No. 26 - NQ/TW, the institutionalization of the spirit of the Resolution into "priorities and support" for Nghe An has just been approved by the National Assembly in Resolution No. 36/2021/QH15, dated November 13, 2021, on piloting a number of specific mechanisms and policies for the development of Nghe An province. However, according to the assessment of economic experts, the level of "priorities and incentives" in Resolution No. 36/2021/QH15 is still quite limited, not commensurate with the requirements to ensure Nghe An advances and completes the mission assigned by Resolution No. 26 - NQ/TW.
The case of Hoang Mai becoming a town early but being slow to make an economic breakthrough is also an example of the lack of coordination between Nghe An's "anticipatory vision" and "breakthrough efforts" on one side; and the mechanisms and policies supporting economic development for Hoang Mai lacking "attraction", especially in comparison with the neighboring Nghi Son Economic Zone (Thanh Hoa), which is also a component of the growth engine of Nam Thanh - Bac Nghe of the North Central region.
Resolution No. 26 - NQ/TW has identified the role of Nghe An and Vinh city as the center of the North Central region, but the implementation of this role from the perspective of international integration has not been clearly demonstrated; especially the approach to Vinh International Airport as the international integration airport of the region is still very vague. Meanwhile, the Central Government's support to attract large foreign investment projects, early construction of deep-water seaports to "open wide" the door to trade, creating a boost for Nghe An to develop into a large industrial and logistics center of the region has not been promptly raised and strongly implemented.
In particular, the approach to developing Vinh city, although identified as a regional development center, with a leading role, is still basically in the spirit of a "provincial capital", not clearly demonstrating the strategic orientation of "regional center development" as determined in Resolution No. 26 - NQ/TW. This somewhat "modest" approach contains the possibility that there is no urgent need, no need to require "different" mechanisms and solutions to meet the requirements of quickly building a development center of the North Central region. This may be the root cause of the missed opportunity to develop Vinh city to the strategic level of a regional center, in line with the trend of the times: urban, science and technology, innovation - creativity, intelligence and with the advantage of Nghe An itself as "a land of talented people".
In addition to the lack of necessary and strong support mechanisms and policies from the Central Government, Nghe An's economic scale is small compared to its potential, its strength is weak, and its starting point is low, making the province lack enough resources to overcome the "threshold" of an "underdeveloped" economy, and has not created the minimum initial conditions necessary for a breakthrough.
The Central Steering Committee summed up Resolution 26 NQ/TW on Nghe An and concluded that the basic causes of the above situation are: Some mechanisms and policies are not suitable for the province's conditions; specific mechanisms and policies are slow to be issued. There are plans in association with neighboring localities but there is a lack of operational mechanisms. The quality of planning is not high, there is a lack of connection, synchronization, unity, even conflicts, contradictions, and overlaps between plans; there is a lack of connection between strategies - planning - planning - investment. Support resources from the central budget are still limited, many projects and proposals do not have enough resources to implement. The investment structure is unreasonable, spread out, and the implementation of key projects is not drastic enough; there is a lack of breakthrough solutions to attract strategic investors and effectively mobilize non-budgetary capital for investment in the province.
According to experts and members of the Nghe An Province Socio-Economic Advisory Group, to overcome the above-mentioned "bottlenecks", Nghe An needs breakthrough and new development drivers that are in line with the trend of the times.
