In a speech closing the National Assembly’s Q&A session, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang called on National Assembly deputies to join forces with government agencies to solve problems to overcome current difficulties.

The words have been described as ‘bearing the progressive spirit’. The growth in economy and other development fields is facing difficulties because of ‘unprecedented’ and ‘unpredictable’ reasons/

The GDP growth rate and GDP per capita are two of the five criteria which may be unattainable. Since the Covid-19 outbreak in early 2020, annual economic growth has slowed down.

The GDP growth rate affects other development indexes as Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh explained. If the targeted GDP growth rate cannot be reached, other goals, including GDP per capita and productivity improvement, will be unreachable. 

Vietnam’s GDP is estimated to reach $435 billion in 2023, which will lead to the country being added to its name to the group of the world’s 40 leading economies. However, a problem exists that Vietnam ranks the 121st out of 190 countries and territories in PPP-based (purchasing power parity) GDP per capita, according to the World Bank.

Since Vietnam became an average income country in 2008, Vietnam has been repeatedly warned of the ‘middle income trap’ risk.

From the mid-term conference of the seventh Party Congress in 1994 to the 13th Congress in 2021, the risk of ‘lagging further behind in economy’ was always identified as one of the biggest threats to the country’s development. A lot of plans and solutions have been designed and implemented which have helped the economy make significant progress.

However, the problem is that when Vietnam is speeding up development, other countries are also going ahead, more rapidly than they did in the past and more rapidly than Vietnam today.

The latest report of the World Bank, released in October 2023, predicted that Vietnam’s GDP growth rate would be 4.7 percent this year and if this occurs, the growth rate would be lower than the average growth rate of 5 percent of East Asia-Pacific, and lower than that of other regional countries, including Indonesia (5 percent), the Philippines (5.6 percent) and Cambodia (5.5 percent).

Vietnam has been leading in terms of GDP growth rate in the region over many years. But growth has slowed down. Vietnam strives for a position in top 4 ASEAN in many fields and has succeeded in some fields. However, the Vietnamese income per capita is still low.

Vietnamese economists have predicted that the GDP will grow by 5 percent, lower than expected, but the goal for growth and other major goals still have to gain ‘the highest levels’ for 2023 and the entire tenure.

Institutional reform

Experts all agree that Vietnam will only reach that end through institutional reform.

“Money is important for economic recovery and development, but institutional reform is even more important,” said Vu Tien Loc, a National Assembly deputy.

“A good regime will help fully exploit resources and make money create more money. Meanwhile, with a bad regime, even if we have money, we won’t be able to spend the money on right purposes,” he continued, adding that in current conditions, the most important thing that needs to be done is accelerating the institutional regime and simplifying administrative procedures.

Loc went on to say that it is also necessary to reassure state officers who have shrunk back recently because of fear of making mistakes in implementing tasks.

“I think it is necessary to set up limits on the frequency and sphere of inspection tours, so that ministries, branches, local authorities and businesses can have time and focus on efforts to disburse the credit packages for economic recovery,” he said.  

“It is also necessary to lay down reasonable regulations to handle violations and avoid the criminalization of economic relations. There must be solutions to protect cadres who ‘dare to think’ and ‘dare to do’ for the common good,” he stressed.

Agreeing with Loc about the need for institutional reform, a National Assembly deputy from Ben Tre said 60 percent of legal documents that guide the implementation of laws are released after the days the laws take effect.

Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang, who was assigned to answer the National Assembly’s inquiries about institutional reform, said the two most commonly used words when talking about the law building are ‘slow’ and ‘not yet’.

“The Prime Minister has recently organized 26 delegations of 26 government members to 63 cities/provinces and found 513 local problems, which we are currently trying to resolve,” he said.

Tu Giang