The culture sector and other agencies should make the best of advantages and positive sides of the market economy in building an advanced culture deeply imbued with the national identity and traditions, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has said.

He was speaking at a meeting in Hanoi on August 8 to review 15 years of the implementation of a Resolution of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, eighth tenure, on building and developing an advanced Vietnamese culture advanced with national identity.

Theoretical issues and practicality emerging from the implementation of the Resolution have touched upon the need to highlight the obvious role of culture in sustainable economic development.

“Culture provides a spiritual foundation for society, being a target and a driving force to spur the country’s all-sided development,” PM Dung said.

The Party and State have always given due attention to cultural development, identifying it an important front in the ideological field contributing vastly to the triumph of the nation’s revolutionary cause, he affirmed.

The Resolution demonstrates the Party’s strategic vision and revolutionary thinking in the renewal process, PM Dung said, making clear that it gives high evaluation to the role of culture in the country’s political and socio-economic development as well as intellectual life in the process of modernisation and industrialisation.

Therefore, the task of building an advanced culture with national identity will be heavy in the coming time, the Government leader emphasised.

In order not to lose the national identity when integrating deeply into the world arena, the culture, sport and tourism sector should continue to grasp thoroughly the Party and State’s policy and guidelines on culture and implement the “Culture Development Strategy from now to 2020”, the PM requested.

Action plans should be built towards making the full use of the world’s cutting-edge communication technologies and cultural quintessences possessed by the human kind and the nation should be absorbed and merged, the PM said.

He also asked the culture sector to further improve its State management role in all aspects of the cultural life.

Reports delivered at the meeting looked at the issues of building Vietnamese people in a new period, developing a cultural environment, preserving and promoting the values of cultural heritages and cultures of ethnic minorities, implementing cultural policy on belief and religions, and expanding cultural cooperation among others in the reviewed time.-VNA