Economic growth needs to create competition.

According to Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cung, the higher the economic growth target, the bigger the solution must be, especially the solution must be in action, not just in resolutions.

Sharing with reporters recently, Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cung - former Director of the Central Institute for Economic Management - Ministry of Planning and Investment said that the GDP growth target must be commensurate with the implementation solutions. Accordingly, the higher the economic growth target, the larger and more drastic the implementation solutions must be to achieve it. The solution here is a solution of action, not a solution of words, not a solution in a resolution.

Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cung - former Director of the Central Institute for Economic Management. Illustrative photo

- Improving the business environment is considered an important solution to promote economic growth. So in 2025, what favorable conditions will we have to improve the business environment, sir?

Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cung: With many years of experience in reforming and improving the business environment, I believe that in 2025, Vietnam will have unprecedented advantages in reforming and improving the investment and business environment, because General Secretary To Lam has clearly stated: Institutions are the bottleneck of bottlenecks and institutional reform and removing barriers are the breakthroughs of breakthroughs. In my opinion, this viewpoint is completely correct in the current period.

General Secretary To Lam also said that we must change the institutions and laws according to a new mindset, which is to abandon the long-standing mindset of 'if you can't manage it, then ban it'. With that new mindset and breakthrough direction, I believe that removing some of the fundamental barriers to businesses today is completely within reach. Vietnam should also take advantage of this opportunity to improve the investment and business environment, creating more favorable conditions for businesses to operate.

Similarly, regulations on unreasonable business conditions, which are unreasonable here, are easy to identify because they are no longer suitable for the market economy, meaning they interfere with the production and business activities of enterprises and interfere with the rights of business investors. Administrative regulations that are unclear, non-specific, and non-transparent can never be managed, but only create opportunities and room for state officials to arbitrarily intervene in business activities.

Improving the business investment environment in 2025 can be done in the direction of complete decentralization to localities, so that localities decide, localities act, and localities take responsibility. Doing so will create an atmosphere, a healthy competitive environment among localities, facilitating business activities of enterprises and attracting investment to localities.

- Disbursement of public investment capital is still considered a bottleneck in Vietnam's economic growth. In your opinion, how should we overcome this bottleneck in 2025?

Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cung: ​​​​The causes of slow disbursement of public investment capital have been mentioned many times, including a number of specific groups of causes, including: Causes of low investment preparation and investment quality, even some poor quality investment projects, so when implementing, we have to ask for permission and make adjustments, causing the project to be prolonged and increase capital; causes due to overlapping legal regulations; causes due to contractors' lack of capacity; causes due to lack of raw materials and causes due to market price fluctuations that we cannot promptly adjust for contractors.

We have also proposed solutions and established many delegations. The Prime Minister has personally directed the implementation of urging and promoting the disbursement of public investment capital, but the disbursement progress is still slow.

So perhaps we need to change, I think that to effectively disburse public investment capital, the first thing to do is to focus on key projects, especially infrastructure development, especially transport infrastructure and electricity infrastructure. In fact, in recent years we have focused on priority projects of priority, key projects of key projects and thus the ability to disburse public investment capital will be better. Because these projects cannot be left alone, we have also begun to reform administrative procedures with more decentralization to ministries, branches and local authorities in public investment management. Along with that, the Law on Public Investment has been amended 2-3 times in recent years, which will help overcome a significant part of the weaknesses of the law.

In addition, we have also created mechanisms for contractors to have more adequate sources of raw materials and better site clearance. Because when we focus on key projects, efforts to implement public investment are also more concentrated. With such changes, I believe that public investment in the coming time will have certain improvements.

Create favorable conditions for businesses to operate in production and business, contributing to economic growth. Illustrative photo

- In 2025, the Prime Minister requested to strive to achieve a growth target of 8% or more. How do you evaluate this target?

Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cung: ​​In my opinion, the growth target is fine, but it must be commensurate with the implementation solutions. If the growth target is high, the implementation solutions must be large enough and drastic enough to achieve it. The solution here is a solution of action, not a solution in words, not a solution in a resolution.

In particular, growth solutions must overcome the weaknesses and shortcomings of the Vietnamese economy in 2024, which are strong reforms and dramatic improvements in the business environment in Vietnam. In addition, 2025 is considered a pivotal year for the Vietnamese economy. Provinces and cities across the country have also approved the socio-economic development plan for the 2021-2030 period and vision to 2050 with decisions approved by the Prime Minister. In the development plan, almost all provinces and centrally run cities set a target of GRDP growth of over 10%. Thus, if localities achieve GRDP growth of over 10%, the whole country will also achieve a growth rate of over 10%.

In order for localities to achieve growth rates of over 10%, it is necessary to focus on local governments in promoting economic development, which means putting pressure on them and at the same time creating mechanisms to motivate and enable them to act. To do so, it is necessary to decentralize, delegate power, and create autonomy for provincial and centrally-run city governments so that they can compete with each other in economic development.

Experience shows that, about 10 to 15 years ago, competition between localities created a real driving force for Vietnam's economic growth. Along with this competition, we have implemented streamlining of the apparatus, decentralization, and decentralization in a thorough manner in the direction of evaluating local governments, aiming for a growth target of over 10% and evaluating local governments based on the results and effectiveness achieved in promoting local economic development. With such an approach, this is a strong solution for Vietnam's economic growth in 2025.

Thank you!

In 2025, the Government submitted to the Party Central Committee and the National Assembly a resolution on the GDP growth target of 6.5-7%, striving for 7-7.5%, and at the same time, requiring a GDP growth rate of 8% or higher in 2025. This is considered a high growth rate with many challenges for Vietnam in 2025.

Source: https://congthuong.vn/tang-truong-kinh-te-can-tao-su-canh-tranh-lan-nhau-372108.html