VietNamNet Bridge – Six industries including consumer electrics/electronics, food processing, ship building, agriculture machinery, environment and energy saving, automobile/car part manufacturing have been defined as the six key industries which would receive the special support to develop within the framework of the Vietnam – Japan cooperation program.

Nguyen Thi Tue Anh, Head of the Business Environment and Competitiveness Division under the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), the author of the draft strategy on Vietnam’s industrialization, said the draft has been submitted to the government.

Anh stressed that the draft has been submitted after getting the high consensus among relevant ministries and branches.

In fact, it took the agencies two years to argue about which industries should be highlighted as “priority” to receive the special support.

The biggest controversial matter, relating to the selection of the industries, has also been settled. Six industries have been chosen, while a series of supporting branches which serve the six key industries have also been listed.

However, this does not mean that all the enterprises operating in the six key industries would have the opportunities to approach the investment incentives to develop.

Anh explained that the two sides Vietnam and Japan are mapping out the action plans for every industry. “They would choose 2-3 branches which can most satisfy the requirements set up by the both sides,” she said.

Of the six industries, food processing, agriculture machinery and shipbuilding are the industries Vietnam has great potentials to develop, but the productivity and the competitiveness remain low.

The other industries, electronics and automobile manufacturing, have developed strongly in recent years, but the automobile production in Vietnam simply means the assembling. This means that Vietnam merely is just the place to assemble car parts from the imports, due to the underdevelopment of the supporting industries.

Meanwhile, the energy industry is the new sector which is believed to play a very important role in the country’s modernization and industrialization process.

“The expansion of the industries in the time to come should be associated with the efforts to increase the added value of the products, which would need the government’s support through the industry policies,” Anh suggested while discussing the strengthening of the production capacity of the six chosen industries.

The program with the focus on six key industries also aims to help Vietnamese enterprises take initiative in getting adapted to the new circumstances when Vietnam has to cut down the tariff under its AFTA commitments by 2018 and other integration commitments by 2020.

Under the industrialization strategy, food processing has been highlighted as the industry to have the highest production value with the gradually improving added value concentration. Experts believe that the industry would make a significant contribution to the sustainable development of Vietnam’s economy.

The food demand in Asia is believed to go beyond the production capacity. China, the main fruit and vegetable exporter, has met big difficulties in recent years in arranging the labor force for the food processing, which has raised the worry that the food supply may be unstable in the region.

This is one of the reasons for Vietnam to decide to gather its strength on the food processing, and for Japan to increase its investment in the field in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, according to Hirohoko Sekiya -- seafood, rice, coffee and vegetables are the four branches Japanese enterprises are most interested in.

TBKTVN