Cuong shared his view about the plan to merge provinces and eliminate district-level administration in an interview with VietNamNet.

Currently, the country has 63 provinces and cities, 696 district-level administrative units, and 10,035 commune-level administrative units.

According to Conclusion 127 dated February 28, the Politburo and the Secretariat assigned the Government Party Committee to lead and coordinate with the Central Organizing Committee, the National Assembly Party Committee, the Fatherland Front Party Committee, central mass organizations, and related agencies to research and develop a proposal for merging some province-level administrative units, eliminating district-level administration, and continuing to merge commune-level administrative units.

The government’s proposal, recently reviewed by the Politburo, includes a plan to cut the number of provinces by 50 percent and grassroots administrative units by 60-70 percent. As a researcher, how do you view this "revolutionary" restructuring and streamlining of the political system?

I believe that the organization and apparatus streamlining is a revolutionary reform. It aligns with historical laws.

Several administrative reforms occurred in history. For instance, in the 19th century, King Minh Mang carried out an administration reform from the central to local levels. He divided the country into 30 provinces and one Thua Thien prefect. Such reforms made the system tighter and leaner.

In 2017, the Party issued Resolution 18 on renovating and restructuring the political apparatus. However, for various reasons, its implementation has not yielded significant results.

Today, the Party and the State are determined to pursue renovation and restructuring. With most of the budget spent to maintain the administrative system, little is left for national development. Thus, we must streamline the apparatus, reduce administrative agencies, and merge those with similar functions.

For example, merging the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment makes sense. The Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs was created after our successful resistance war to address veteran policies, but now, 50 years after reunification, restructuring and eliminating it is reasonable.

Regarding the policy of merging some provinces, I think this is a necessity.

In the past, after the war, the Party and State merged several localities to form large provinces, like Ha Son Binh, Ha Tuyen, Hoang Lien Son, Minh Hai, and Binh Tri Thien, but later split them again for various reasons.

We see that many countries, larger and more populous than Vietnam, have fewer provinces and cities. Vietnam can learn from their experience.

Given today’s socio-economic conditions and information technology, how many provinces and cities do you think should we have? How should historical and cultural factors be considered in mergers?

In my view, we can’t arbitrarily decide the number of provinces. But localities that are too small, with limited resources for infrastructure, socio-economic growth, and human resources, should merge. This would give provinces more development space.

Moreover, when implementing a merger, it is necessary to consider factors like geography, economics, politics, culture, and even community psychology.

Naming merged provinces requires careful discussion, as it ties into the cultural factors mentioned above.

For provinces with large areas and strong development potential, the merger must be studied and weighed carefully.

Restructuring will cause many officials to become redundant. How should authorities address this?

We must face the fact that restructuring will result in a large number of surplus officials. Thus, careful selection is needed—those meeting the new demands should be assigned roles from central to grassroots levels. For those unfit, other jobs can be arranged based on their abilities and strengths.

Restructuring and merging require higher management capacity from local officials. Therefore, the apparatus’s roles and tasks must be defined to match practical needs.

We need deeper research and evaluation of the results of streamlining the political system and reorganizing administrative units at all levels. This isn’t just about adjusting boundaries but also reshaping economic space, reassigning duties, decentralizing, and reallocating and combining economic resources, according to Party Chief To Lam.

Permanent Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Hoa Binh said that in the government’s proposal to the Politburo, when districts are eliminated, one-third of their tasks will shift to provinces, and two-thirds will go to communes (grassroots level).

According to Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra, the country currently has 10,035 commune-level administrative units, expected to be reduced to about 2,000. At that point, each commune will be "almost like a small district."

Quang Phong