Mr. Vu Khoan: Worried about losing at 'home', don't forget to win at 'away'

Mr. Vu Khoan, former Deputy Prime Minister, emphasized this message in a talk on Vietnam's integration.

Mr. Vu Khoan, former Deputy Prime Minister, emphasized that recently many people often mention the risk of Vietnamese enterprises losing at home when international integration is increasingly deep, but why not look at the aspect that we need to make efforts to win at the 'away field' as well?

Former Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan.

Increase power and strength

Further analyzing this argument, former Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan said that our Party's viewpoint has always been to clearly recognize that Vietnam is an inseparable part of the world. As early as December 1946, President Ho sent a letter to the United Nations, clearly expressing the spirit of Vietnam's readiness to cooperate with many other countries, welcoming foreign engineers to work in Vietnam, helping Vietnam develop, and at the same time being ready to open the door to welcome foreign enterprises to do business in Vietnam in the spirit of cooperation...

According to Mr. Vu Khoan, Vietnam’s international integration, signing and participating in many trade agreements (from WTO, FTAs, TPP...) is an inevitable trend. When participating in such international playgrounds, there will be two sides, there will be benefits but also challenges, even in some situations, having to accept sacrificing small and immediate benefits to achieve larger and longer-term benefits.

Reality has proven that in the process of international integration, Vietnam's position and strength are increasingly enhanced. For example, in terms of economy, it is evident that thanks to joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) and many other trade agreements, Vietnam's export of goods to the world has increased sharply, along with increasing domestic production, creating more jobs, contributing to improving people's lives... Besides, the flow of FDI, ODA, remittances... into Vietnam is increasing, contributing significantly to supplementing resources for national development.

“I find it strange that recently, here and there, people keep talking about how we are worried about losing at home, but we don’t see the fact that we have the opportunity and need to make efforts to win away from home,” Mr. Vu Khoan emphasized. For example, for the Vietnamese textile and garment industry, in 2000, the export turnover to the US market alone was only about 50 million USD. But thanks to the Vietnam-US Trade Agreement signed in 2001, Vietnam’s textile and garment exports to the US increased sharply, reaching about 10 billion USD by 2015. According to forecasts, if the TPP is implemented, Vietnam’s textile and garment industry will benefit a lot. With the potential of the Vietnamese textile and garment industry, it is clear that we can win away from home, the problem is how we can make it happen.

Furthermore, thanks to international economic integration, the trading market is getting bigger and bigger, competitive pressure is increasing, but in return, producers and consumers have the opportunity to benefit from producing and consuming more with better quality products and more competitive prices.

In addition, the integration process has helped Vietnam to increasingly increase its position in the international arena. This is demonstrated by the fact that our country has been participating in more and more prestigious international organizations, and more and more leaders of countries are interested in visiting and working in Vietnam. This has also opened up many new business cooperation opportunities between the two sides.

In particular, according to Mr. Vu Khoan, international integration also has the benefit of helping Vietnam promote the process of domestic institutional innovation. This innovation, of course, is due to both internal national needs, but also has the impact of implementing international commitments.

Need to turn external force into internal force

According to Mr. Vu Khoan, integration inevitably brings competition. “Vietnam’s obvious weakness is that it sees the challenges, knows the challenges from integration but has not done well to reduce risks and turn challenges into opportunities. Therefore, if we lose at home, the fault lies with us, not with integration.” For example, the Vietnamese coffee industry is famous for exporting a lot, but mainly raw coffee, with little added value.

Currently, according to Mr. Vu Khoan, Vietnam has many national competitive advantages, such as: political stability, a wide market distribution system, land for factories, enterprises, many commercial activities... but domestic enterprises themselves cannot take over, cannot promote, and are increasingly falling into the hands of foreign enterprises.

Another important limitation, according to Mr. Vu Khoan, is that Vietnam's institutions are changing too slowly, so when integrating, facing new challenges and barriers, Vietnam's ability to protect itself is still weak.

From this reality, Mr. Vu Khoan believes that Vietnam cannot avoid integration, but needs to integrate while still maintaining independence and autonomy. Participating in integration, signing many trade agreements... is participating in the common rules of the game, but we must have our own way of playing. For example, we play football with its common rules, but the formation, who plays, how they play is up to us, winning or losing is up to us.

With that point of view, according to Mr. Vu Khoan, Vietnam needs to clearly identify that development is based on internal strength, external strength is also needed but only as a supporting part. In reality, the current economic structure of Vietnam is clearly showing that external strength is somewhat dominant. For example, the export turnover is very large, but the part belonging to domestic enterprises is much lower than that of FDI enterprises. To develop sustainably, internal strength needs to be stronger, and external strength must be turned into internal strength. Looking at China and Thailand, we can see that they have called for FDI capital, mobilized a lot of external strength, but they have done the job of turning external strength into internal strength for development. As for Vietnam, it has not been able to do as they have.

Mr. Vu Khoan's point of view is that integration is a process of both cooperation and struggle; integration must also maintain national security and defense, and preserve Vietnam's cultural identity. Vietnam needs to cooperate and provide incentives to foreign investors, but should not indulge them too much, give them too much incentives, especially should not cause inequality in incentives in attracting investment between domestic and foreign enterprises. At the same time, the process of fighting to maintain independence and autonomy must be carried out seriously but must not be so extreme as to sever relations with a partner country or a partner.

And of course, the cause of international integration belongs to all people, but the core must be the business community. Businesses are the force directly participating in the integration playground. Notably, in general, the competitiveness of Vietnamese businesses is currently still weak”./.

According to VOV