Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung has stressed the urgent significance of improving labour productivity in promoting growth, overcoming the middle-income trap, avoiding falling behind and narrowing down development gap with other countries.

Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung addresses the conference

Addressing a conference in Hanoi on August 7, the minister underlined the need to seek more comprehensive, prompt and effective solutions to the issue.

According to head of the General Statistics Office Nguyen Bich Lam, Vietnam’s labour productivity has been enhanced through years, reaching 7.08 percent in 2018 to 4,521 USD per labour, much higher than the 2011’s figure of 55.2 million VND per labour.

He said that in 2018, the labour productivity of the Vietnamese economy expanded 6 percent over 2017, with average growth in the 2016-2018 period of 5.77 percent, compared to an average of 4.35 percent in the 2011-2015 period.

In the 2011-2018 period, labour productivity grew 4.88 percent per year, he added.

Lam pointed to reasons why labour productivity in Vietnam is lower than that of many countries in the region and the world, including the small scale of the economy, slow labour structure shifting, out-of-date machinery, equipment and technology, and the limited quality of human resources.

He added that although the labour structure shifting in Vietnam is fast, the number of labourers in agro-forestry-fisheries area is still high with low added value and low labour productivity.

Minister Dung highlighted that defining factors impacting labour productivity is key to seek suitable measures to improve the speed of increasing labour productivity in the future.

At the event, participants also discussed measures at macro level to speed up economic restructuring and growth model renewal, along with developing human resources quality, among others.