Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh chaired the conference to appraise the national master plan.

This is the first time Vietnam has carried out national planning to re-evaluate the current situation in a substantial and comprehensive manner, thereby proposing orientations for the arrangement and rearrangement of the country's development space, opening up new development spaces, new development opportunities, and new development drivers to achieve the goals and aspirations set by the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress, to become a developed, high-income country by 2045.

Also attending were Deputy Prime Minister Le Van Thanh, Ministers of Planning and Investment, Natural Resources and Environment, Science and Technology, Education and Training, Minister and Chairman of the Ethnic Minorities Committee; leaders of central ministries and branches and experts.

Speaking at the opening of the conference, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh emphasized that planning work is very important. We have done a lot of planning, such as regional, area, provincial planning, industry and product planning, planning to district and commune levels. However, this is the first time we have done national planning. This national master plan is extremely important, concretizing the guidelines of the 13th National Party Congress, concretizing the Platform for national construction in the transition period to socialism (Supplemented and developed in 2011), specialized resolutions of the Central Committee, especially the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress. We have made a 5-year plan and a 10-year strategy for socio-economic development, from which we closely follow and concretize the planning to make it feasible and achievable.

The Prime Minister delivered the opening speech at the Conference.

According to the Prime Minister, planning must comply with legal regulations, closely follow the Party's policies and guidelines; more importantly, how is the appraisal and assessment of planning quality done, is it guaranteed, correct, and suitable for the country? Planning must have innovative thinking and strategic vision. Resources originate from thinking, motivation originates from innovation, strength originates from the people. Thinking must be innovative, creating resources and motivation; strategic vision is that planning must point out distinct potentials, outstanding opportunities, competitive advantages to promote internal resources, which are people, nature, cultural traditions, history; external resources are important and breakthrough. Resources include financial, technological, management resources; human resource training.

The Prime Minister affirmed that although Vietnam is a latecomer, it always considers human resources as decisive; throughout this process, it is necessary to maximize the qualities, intelligence, and capacity of Vietnamese people for development. Internal resources are still decisive, strategic, fundamental, and long-term; external resources are breakthroughs.

Along with that, the Prime Minister pointed out that it is necessary to attach importance to the feasibility of planning; it is necessary to consider development corridors, dynamic regions, and growth poles to see if they have been correctly identified? We need to mobilize the strength of the collective because this is a difficult task, large in scale, a big and sensitive issue, but the more difficult and complicated it is, the more democracy and collective intelligence must be promoted. Therefore, the Council has an important role, because planning appraisal is an extremely important job, pointing out feasible issues to do, closely following the Party's guidelines and policies, bringing about efficiency, and achieving the set goals.

The report of the Ministry of Planning and Investment said that the Council for Appraising the National Master Plan for the 2021-2030 period, with a vision to 2050, was established under Decision No. 965/QD-TTg dated August 10, 2022 of the Prime Minister. Deputy Prime Minister Le Van Thanh is the Chairman of the Council. The Council has 34 members who are leaders of a number of Party agencies, agencies of the National Assembly, Ministers of Ministries, ministerial-level agencies and Chairmen of the People's Committees of 07 provinces and centrally run cities; there are 15 members including 10 experts reviewing the Plan and 05 experts reviewing the Strategic Environmental Assessment Report of the Plan. On September 14, 2022, the Council held a Conference to appraise the National Master Plan for the 2021-2030 period, with a vision to 2050.

The national master plan is the first plan to be developed in Vietnam according to the provisions of the 2017 Planning Law, concretizing the country's socio-economic development strategy for the period 2021-2030, focusing on the distribution and spatial organization of socio-economic activities, national defense, security and environmental protection of national, international and inter-regional importance nationwide, requiring inter-sectoral and inter-level coordination, with the participation of ministries, branches, localities, research institutes, experts and scientists at home and abroad.

Building a national master plan is a big, difficult, complicated and unprecedented task, but this is also an opportunity to re-evaluate the current situation in a substantial and comprehensive way, thereby proposing orientations for arranging and rearranging the country's development space, opening up new development spaces, new development opportunities, new development drivers to achieve the goals and aspirations that the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress has determined, by 2045 becoming a developed, high-income country.

The national master plan has focused on implementing key tasks including: Identifying major viewpoints on national development; Identifying and orienting development for dynamic regions and growth poles; Forming economic axes and corridors; Completing the infrastructure network to support the formation of economic corridors and soon forming a synchronous and modern infrastructure system in dynamic regions.

Vu Khuyen