Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung

Our country starts 2025 with a new mindset, courage, confidence, and determination to reform and innovate the entire political system. It aims to achieve the highest results of the 2021-2025 plan, welcome the 14th National Party Congress, and prepare to enter a new era of strong and prosperous development.

In that context, although the global situation is forecast to remain challenging, the government requires 8 per cent of growth this year, higher than the target set by the National Assembly. This is a high growth rate with many challenges, but it can be achieved to create momentum for breakthrough growth.

The world context has been changing rapidly with many new factors emerging, especially in science, technology, and innovation; which could create a new turning point all over the world, and open up great opportunities, and challenges to all economies.

After previous turning points in history such as the Industrial Revolution, war, and epidemics, numerous unprecedented opportunities and challenges were created for every country. An economy that is proactive, ready, and accepting of innovation will change its destiny. For example, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have successfully taken advantage of the second and third revolutions to become developed economies.

On the contrary, an economy that does not reform or innovate will miss the opportunity and fall behind others.

Removing institutional bottlenecks

To achieve such great expectations, in addition to keeping up with trends worldwide, transformations within the economy are the key to releasing resources.

In Vietnam, the legal system has been built to perfect the institutions for developing a socialist-oriented market economy; create a legal basis and a favourable environment for mobilising and effectively using investment resources. It has also helped build an independent, self-reliant economy, and implemented industrialisation and modernisation for the country.

However, there are still institutional shortcomings that need to be overcome and resolved. The quality of legal documents has not been consistent with reality and has not met the requirements of feasibility, efficiency, timeliness, accessibility, and ease of implementation. Some newly enacted laws have had to be amended and supplemented, and some provisions of legal documents are inconsistent. With that, it is difficult to ensure stability, longevity, and timely handling of fluctuations under the responsibility of the government and local authorities.

Meanwhile, administrative procedures in legal documents are still cumbersome. For example, investment procedures are regulated in many different laws such as land, construction, the environment, technology transfer, and fire prevention. It takes time to meet every requirement on documents and procedures, and the result of one procedure is the input of another procedure.

Moreover, the time to carry out procedures is often quite long and encounters difficulties due to unclear regulations or different interpretations. The conditions for investment and business are not always obvious, and even unnecessary in some cases.

Despite numerous improvements, incentive policies and funding support have not yet caught up with international practices and new requirements to engage large projects, multinational corporations, and strategic investors in the semiconductor industry, high technology, and AI. There is no key mechanism to attract resources for localities, which are the growth poles of the whole country.

Considering institutions as the “bottleneck of bottlenecks”, the Ministry of Planning and Investment has detected and proposed the fastest removal of those caused by the provisions of laws related to investment, production, and business to promptly adjust or remove institutional obstacles and unlock resources.

To successfully carry out the socioeconomic tasks in 2025, it is necessary to continue implementing several solutions. Firstly, the provisions of laws related to funding and business activities should be reviewed to remove obstacles, simplify administrative procedures, create better conditions for investors, and unlock resources.

Particularly, it is necessary to remove long-standing issues in projects, immediately release backlogged resources, thereby contributing significantly to growth, production and business, state budget revenue, and job creation.

Secondly, we should push researching and implementing preferential policies, support and encourage outstanding investment, including policies on sci-tech, innovation, and national digital transformation.

This will create a strong breakthrough in the investment environment, support developers and enterprises to improve their competitiveness, proactively adapt to future fluctuations, and anticipate new business trends. Domestic and national enterprises, especially groups with competition in the region and internationally, should be supported for expansion, leading the growth of industries and fields.

Next, new economic models, industries, and fields should be studied and promoted to create new growth drivers and catch up with global trends. In the short term, we should implement projects on international and regional financial centres, and free trade zones in some localities; develop a circular economy and sharing economy; and train human resources for the semiconductor industry.

Furthermore, decentralisation and authorisation in construction, land, and the environment should be boosted to appropriate agencies that localities can make decisions and take responsibility, thereby accelerating implementation procedures.

Finally, administrative procedures related to individuals and businesses should be reformed. Regulations on investment conditions for industries and business lines with unclear, unnecessary, unscientific, or unsuitable conditions should be abolished or replaced.

Photo: Samsung

Development orientation

On that basis, the socioeconomic report of the 14th National Party Congress is being completed to determine the main directions and tasks for the 2026-2030 period. This plays a vital role in achieving a high economic growth rate and creating the premise for Vietnam to become a developed, high-income country by 2045.

The main directions for economic growth for the coming period are as follows. Firstly, the development institution, and the quality of the socialist-oriented market economic institution, should be improved to meet the objective integration needs of the country. Perfecting the economic institution is the central task for rapid and sustainability.

The functions and relationships between the state, the market, and society will be defined to reduce the state’s administrative intervention in the market. We need robust policies to mobilise and effectively use domestic and foreign resources for socioeconomic development, in which state resources are used to stimulate and lead social resources.

Secondly, sci-tech, innovation, and digital transformation are designed to help increase productivity, quality, efficiency, and competitiveness in the economy. It is necessary to improve policies and laws in this area in accordance with market mechanisms, and international practices.

In addition, it is necessary to continue to comprehensively and effectively innovate education and training, focusing on high-quality personnel for priority and emerging industries and fields. We should boost training highly qualified people according to international standards to meet market needs, especially in priority and emerging industries and fields such as AI, data science, semiconductors, and construction and operation of high-speed railways.

Next, it is needed to boost industrialisation, modernisation, and economic restructuring associated with growth model innovation, and enhance economic resilience to achieve rapid and sustainable growth on the basis of macroeconomic stability. The industry should apply digital and green transformation, restructure towards in-depth development, and improve productivity, quality, added value and competitiveness of products.

Some industries and service products with high knowledge, technology content, and competitive advantages will be prioritised to form some tourism service centres with high-quality products; there will also be the building of financial centres and free trade zones. In agriculture, production areas, large specialised commodity areas with high productivity, quality, and efficiency will be created for key national and local products.

Three key areas will be restructured: boosting investment efficiency, especially public funding; improving the operational efficiency of enterprises, especially state-owned ones; and restructuring credit institutions.

Finally, it is necessary to ensure synchronous and modern infrastructure, and effectively exploit new space so that urban areas are the driving force for regional rural construction. Inter-regional expressways connecting international gateway seaports, international airports, and international border gates are being built. Energy infrastructure will also be grown rapidly to meet the requirements of high economic growth, diversify types of electricity sources, and ensure reasonable prices.