Staff at MBT Electrical Equipment JSC. — VNS File Photo

Việt Nam's supporting industry needs to advance self-reliance and reduce dependence on imports to improve the value and competitiveness of products in the global value chain.

Experts say that Việt Nam's industrialisation and modernisation strategy for the 2021-2030 period, with a vision to 2045, needs to adapt to rapidly changing domestic and international contexts.

A report by the Industry Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade says that the underdeveloped supporting industry left Việt Nam unable to be self-sufficient in production inputs, leading to a significant dependence on imported spare parts and raw materials.

The trade deficit of inputs for production has been an issue for many years, reducing the added value of domestic industries.

The Industry Department report points out that in recent years, manufacturing and processing industries accounted for a high proportion of nearly 40 per cent of the total net production and business revenue of the economy, but only contributed about 14 per cent of the total GDP, a very low value added compared to other industries.

This weakness not only affects production development and economic growth in the short term, but will continue to affect industry and Việt Nam's economy overall in the long term in the context of deepening international integration.

"Therefore, developing supporting industries and gradually becoming self-reliant on domestic sources of raw materials and components is one of the core issues for sustainable development of Việt Nam's industry in the long term," said a representative of the Industry Department to Công Thương (Industry and Trade) online newspaper.

Highlighting the solution, the Industry Department said that first of all, it was necessary to improve the capacity of supporting industry enterprises; opening up market opportunities for supporting industry enterprises to become suppliers and participate in the supply chain of enterprises manufacturing and assembling final products.

The State also needed to actively expand foreign markets for supporting industry enterprises, along with receiving technical processes and production skills from abroad to improve production capacity, said the department.

In addition, it was necessary to speed up the construction of concentrated supporting industrial parks to create industry clusters; and develop material industries to enhance autonomy in input materials for production and reduce dependence on imported sources.

This would also raise the added value and competitiveness of Vietnamese products and businesses in the global value chain.

Trương Thị Chí Bình, general secretary of the Việt Nam Association for Supporting Industries (VASI), proposed that in the long term, the Government promulgate the Law on Supporting Industries and the Law on Key Industrial Development to affirm the importance of this type of industry, developing specialised policies to promote industrial development, welcome investment flows and shift production from other countries.