VietNamNet Bridge – Dang Le Nguyen Vu, who has been dubbed as the titan in Vietnam’s coffee industry, thinks that the Communist Party’s political programme should not see / treat different economic sectors as separate. The motto “the Vietnamese nation is one” should be applied in economic development.

The “Cong tu Bac Lieu” of the national economy
There are not corrupt SOEs, only corrupt businessmen  

Vu, in the interview given to VietNamNet, stressed that there should not be any differentiations in the treatment of economic sectors.

When commenting on the draft strategy for Vietnam’s socio-economic development, many economists say that the private sector would not be able to develop, if Vietnam continues to differentiate between the private and state economic sectors. What would you, as the owner of a private run business, say about that?

I have been keeping a close watch over the arguments made onthis question. My viewpoint is that we should not treat different sectors differently.

As a developing economy, we need to form a united bloc. In the era of globalisation, we are underthe pressure of competition with other countries and multi-national companies / corporations which are arriving in Vietnam. Given such circumstances, if we still differentiate between each other, we will weaken ourselves. economic

I think that we should not continue arguing about whether the state economic sector or state-owned enterprises should play the decisive role in the national economy. These are the two quite different concepts.

The draft documents for the 11th Communist Party’s Congress have reaffirmed the decisive role of the state economic sector in the national economy. Do you think that this will make the SOEs’ “disease of relying on others” incurable?

Yes, I do. I think we need to clarify the concept of “state economic sector” and “State owned enterprises”. State owned enterprises are just a part of the state economic sector. The concept must not be misunderstood as meaning that preferences and resources must be reserved for state owned enterprises.

Our most important thing is to build up the “pillars” to keep the stability and development of the national economy. However, there are problems in our way of approaching the issue.

Could you please elaborate on this?

Let’s learn the lessons from South Korea and Japan. South Korea also wanted to build “economic pillars”, but their approach was quite different from ours. They did rely on volunteers. In their country, as people devote all their lives to their businesses, they have long term development strategies. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, we appointpeople to some posts only for a certain period.

No CEO in Vietnam keeps the same position for a long time. In many cases, CEO’s term lasts only5 years term and then he switches to work as senior official at a ministry. What happens then is that one CEO sets up the development strategy for business, and then another CEO will “inherit” the strategy.

In our era, we cannot develop with short five-year term development strategies.

When key economic groups belong to the state, this will ensure that the national economy will be a “socialist oriented market economy”. What do you think about this?

In the recent past, at the pre-doi moi (renovation) period, there were only state-owned enterprises, and there was no private sector. I can see that the past made our words and concepts confused and now it is difficult to clarify them

I have to say that the circumstances in the world have become quite different, and that the pressure of competition has been so hard that we need to become one.

There are many strong private run economic groups. Do you think that they managed to grow on their own or they have developed thanks to the state policies?

I think both factors were important. If the policies do not encourage private businesses, no business can grow up.

Enterprises need to have national pride. It is regrettable that is not always the caseWe need to cherish the national pride. Every fire originates from little chips.

Pham Huyen