PM highlights productivity’s role in sustainable development

Hanoi (VNA) – Productivity improvement plays an increasingly decisive role in Vietnam’s GDP growth as it contributed up to 89 percent to national GDP growth this year, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has said.

Speaking at the Vietnam Development Forum 2017, themed “Leveraging productivity growth for sustainable development”, in Hanoi on December 13, the Government leader said Vietnam needs support and policy consultation from development partners, business communities as well as domestic and foreign experts to seek measures to increase productivity.

“Improving productivity means not only increasing the productivity of workers but also enhancing the efficiency of capital use”, he said, adding that in the context of globalisation, productivity improvement is the cornerstone for enhancing the competitiveness of every country.

Regarding key solutions to productivity improvement, the PM stressed that it is necessary to strongly reform the banking system and financial markets in the direction of increasing scale, transparency and fair competition, while improving access to capital resources of small and medium sized enterprises, farmers and ethnic minority groups.

He applauded recommendations by experts that Vietnam needs drastic reform of the state-owned enterprises which hold a large amount of capital of the economy, but do not use money effectively.

To increase labour productivity, the Vietnamese Government always gives priority to allocating budgets for and encourage enterprises to invest in training and education in order to improve labourers’ skills and creativity, he stated.

Attention has also been paid to reforming salary and wage regime and caring for the material and spiritual lives of workers in businesses, especially those in concentrated industrial zones, he added.

Vietnam will drastically restructure the economy and shift labour from the low-productivity agricultural sector to the industrial and services sectors, towards more sustainable national productivity and higher-value production with fewer resources.

The Government is also paying heed to improving the total–factor productivity (TFP) by increasing investment in scientific research, application of advanced technologies, infrastructure development, and smart connection; while promoting regulatory reform, bettering State governance capacity and improving business climate, he said.

On the basis of the TFP improvement, Vietnam will get an opportunity to overcome the middle income trap, he stressed.

For successful productivity improvement, Vietnam has actively promoted international integration and effectively tapped opportunities brought by free trade agreements (FTAs), especially new-generation ones such the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), he said.

The leader affirmed the Government’s standpoint of maintaining socio-political stability, consolidating the macro economy, promoting democracy for all people, stepping up anti-corruption fight and making every effort to realise 17 UN sustainable development goals.-VNA