Talk and action: Reform is sluggish due to fear of difficulty

The more difficult it is, the more the reform process must be accelerated to restructure the economy. That is the greatest effort to overcome weaknesses and rise up in the long term.

At this time, when the tight monetary policy is increasingly effective, not only businesses are facing difficulties but banks are also facing many burdens and risks.

There was even a time when some small, weak banks were shaken in their liquidity, forcing the State Bank to step in to help.

Therefore, when the Government announced to continue tightening monetary policy, it made the banking sector more worried about the possible negative consequences that could cause difficulties for business operations. There were complaints, but the leaders of the monetary management agency continued to affirm that they would be determined and take strong measures.

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The successive moves to regulate the foreign exchange market or sanction credit institutions that do not meet the criteria for non-productive lending have shown that this time the agency will do it for real.

Therefore, experts hope that after this difficult period, weak credit institutions will be examined and screened... Something we have talked about many times but have not been able to do.

Last year, when the controversy over Circular 13 broke out between the management agency with the view of raising safety standards to international requirements and the credit institutions on the other side, although at first some state agencies showed determination, they eventually gave up and put aside their wishes to reform and raise the operating standards of their credit institutions because they "sympathized" with the difficulties that banks complained about.

And so, the quality and safety standards of banks still cannot be implemented as intended.

Also last year, domestic banks struggled to increase capital to the required VND3,000 billion. However, there were still banks that could not complete the requirement, which the management agency had repeatedly affirmed that it would strictly enforce, without compromise, and severely punish those who failed to complete.

However, in the end, due to the difficult market situation, capital mobilization was not as expected, so a decision was made to postpone the capital increase for another year.

Up to now, more than half of the extension period has passed and the capital increase has not been mentioned. Instead, both the management agency and the banks have to shield themselves from the difficulties of inflation and monetary tightening. And it seems that, with the difficult situation this year, the capital increase will be difficult to meet the deadline.

The need to improve capacity and meet integration standards of banks continues to be slow.

It seems that, despite knowing that Vietnamese banks still have many limitations and weaknesses, the application of technical standards and basic requirements for capital increase have all been stopped in the past year because banks cannot comply.

"Sympathizing" with the difficulties, instead of handling them as previously announced many times, the obvious way is to postpone and not apply...

Recently, Vietnam Steel Corporation has been equitized. However, the equitization of a 91 corporation was not enough to stir up the long silence of this process in recent times.

Moreover, the stock market is plummeting. As a result, the IPO of the Steel Corporation did not meet the expected plan, causing many people to predict that, although 1-2 large units will continue to IPO in the near future, it will only be the final step to complete a long and delayed equitization process from many years ago, while new plans have not yet started.

This reality shows that, certainly, the equitization of large enterprises in Vietnam will continue to be slow and halted. The process of reforming state-owned enterprises will continue to be prolonged.

Among the many reasons justifying this delay, people mentioned economic difficulties, disadvantages from the stock market... as force majeure.

Faced with this situation, economists have expressed concern because a series of reform programs have stalled as the economy struggles.

Meanwhile, on the contrary, experts and many international organizations believe that reform efforts cannot be stopped because of difficulties.

The more difficult it is, the more the reform process should be accelerated to restructure the economy towards improving efficiency and competitiveness. That is the greatest effort to overcome weaknesses and turn difficulties into opportunities for long-term growth.

Recently, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung stated that while we must focus on achieving the goals and tasks of 2011, we must implement fundamental, long-term solutions to ensure rapid and sustainable development. We must urgently restructure the economy and transform the growth model from mainly extensive growth based on increased investment capital, exploitation of resources and low-quality labor to an intensive growth model based on the application of new achievements in science and technology, high-quality human resources and modern management skills.

Hopefully, this spirit will be materialized into practice without being stagnant like the above cases to create and maintain the momentum for innovation and national development.

According to vef.vn