Expectations for the 14th Party Congress: Choosing the right 'breakthrough of breakthroughs' to elevate the country's position.

Associate Professor Ngo Tri Long, former Director of the Institute for Market and Price Research (Ministry of Finance), noted that the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam is taking place against the backdrop of a world entering a period of profound upheaval, with intense strategic competition, geopolitical conflicts, supply chain disruptions, and intertwined risks of inflation and declining growth. Domestically, after nearly 40 years of Doi Moi (Renovation), Vietnam has accumulated an important foundation in terms of economic scale, infrastructure, production capacity, and integration. However, the country is also facing a decisive threshold: either break through to join the group of high-income developed countries in the next few decades, or fall into the inertia of average growth, with slow productivity improvement and a gradual decline in competitiveness.

From the perspective of an economist with long-standing involvement in policy practice, Associate Professor Ngo Tri Long expects the 14th National Congress to be a congress of long-term vision and substantive breakthroughs, especially breakthroughs in institutions and national governance capacity.

According to Mr. Long, in development economics, good institutions are always the "lever of all levers," because institutions create trust, reduce transaction costs, encourage investment, promote innovation, and allocate resources efficiently. Therefore, the requirement is not only to continue improving institutions, but also to significantly enhance the quality of governance towards a system that is both "fast and accurate," making timely decisions but with clear accountability, transparent processes, and evaluation based on output and actual impact.

Institutional breakthroughs must go hand in hand with ensuring policy consistency and predictability, reducing risks for businesses and investors; clearly decentralizing power but coupled with mechanisms for power control, supervision, and accountability; and drastically cutting compliance costs through simplifying procedures and expanding digital public services. Only when the system operates smoothly can social resources be unleashed and utilized effectively.

Along with institutional reforms, Associate Professor Dr. Ngo Tri Long expects the 14th National Congress to clearly establish a new growth model based on productivity, in which science and technology, innovation, and digital transformation are the central driving forces, and high-quality human resources are the decisive factor.

Growth heavily reliant on capital and unskilled labor will soon reach its limit; therefore, to become prosperous, Vietnam must improve its productivity and position in the value chain. This requires mechanisms to encourage research and development, promote businesses to invest in innovation, develop a data and digital ecosystem, and select the right areas for "leapfrogging" ahead. Rapid development in the coming period must also be closely linked to green growth, energy transition, and sustainable development, so as not to compromise the environment and public health.

Another important endogenous driving force is the growth of the business community. Associate Professor Ngo Tri Long hopes that the 14th National Congress will continue to affirm the role of the private economy as a crucial driver of growth, innovation, and job creation, through building a fair and transparent business environment, ensuring property rights, and improving access to resources.

For state-owned enterprises, the focus should be on essential sectors and major economic balances, but they must operate according to market discipline, modern governance, transparency, and closely link the responsibility for preserving and developing state capital with accountability.

"Ultimately, development must be perceived by the people through an increasingly better quality of life, from employment, income, public services, healthcare, education to social security and opportunities for future generations. To achieve this, growth must go hand in hand with improving the efficiency of public spending and investment, improving the quality of human resources, and increasing the resilience of the socio-economic system to domestic and international shocks," Associate Professor Ngo Tri Long shared.

"I believe Vietnam has the crucial conditions for a breakthrough, but the 'window of opportunity' won't stay open forever. The 14th Party Congress needs to choose the right strategic priorities, focus resources on breakthroughs with significant ripple effects, and most importantly, build a sufficiently strong implementation mechanism to transform political determination into concrete socio-economic results. Then, the aspiration for a prosperous and strong Vietnam in the new era will not only be a goal, but will become a sustainable development trajectory for the country," Associate Professor Ngo Tri Long shared.

The 14th Party Congress is a new milestone demonstrating courage and high political determination.

According to Dr. Nguyen Minh Phong, former Head of the Economic Research Department at the Hanoi Institute for Socio-Economic Development Research, the 14th National Congress of the Party not only demonstrates continuity but also develops and updates many new viewpoints, goals, and groundbreaking, more powerful solutions and tasks, reflecting innovation, creativity, and revolutionary thinking and action, creating a fresh breeze and expectations for many breakthroughs that are appropriate to the actual situation and meet the requirements of national development in the new period.

Dr. Nguyen Minh Phong believes that what the people and business community appreciate and agree with most is that, for the first time, the Party Congress document no longer uses the phrase "economic components," but instead uses "economic sectors" when referring to the private economy; at the same time, it officially affirms the need to fully develop the functions and roles of economic sectors; in particular, it emphasizes that the private economic sector is "the most important driving force of the economy"; while the state economy truly plays a leading role in ensuring major balances, strategic orientation, and leading the economy; cooperative economy, collective economy, foreign-invested economy, and other economic forms play important roles…

From there, Dr. Nguyen Minh Phong expressed his hope that after the Congress, Vietnam will continue to improve the overall institutional and organizational model of the political system towards a streamlined, strong, efficient, effective, and effective direction, expanding the development space; properly address the relationship between the State, the market, and society, so that the market truly plays a decisive role in mobilizing and allocating resources; prioritize the development of new productive forces associated with digital transformation and green transformation, with socio-economic development and environmental protection as the central focus; continue to improve productivity, quality, efficiency, added value, and competitiveness of the economy; and use science and technology, innovation, and digital transformation as the main driving forces; creating new productive forces, new methods, and new fields of production and business.

Furthermore, it is crucial to effectively address the relationship between domestic production autonomy and participation in global value chains. This includes promoting regional linkages, expanding and restructuring development spaces to align with the new administrative system and the development of the Fourth Industrial Revolution...

In particular, greater emphasis should be placed on building and disseminating national standard values ​​as a guiding principle and driving force to strengthen and promote the power of national unity, coupled with a full understanding and improvement of mechanisms to protect national interests, control vested interests, and respect the legitimate interests of citizens and businesses, enhancing talent attraction and fundamentally reforming personnel work, and thoroughly preventing and combating corruption, negative practices, and waste.

"The people deeply believe that the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam is a new milestone demonstrating courage and high political determination, the convergence and crystallization of the wisdom of the entire Party and the entire people in the effort to overcome subjective limitations in both awareness and institutions, creating a foundation for synergy and comprehensive strength to successfully achieve the goal of building Vietnam into a developing country with modern industry and high middle income by 2030; and a developed country with high income by 2045...", Dr. Nguyen Minh Phong emphasized.