A winning vision for the future

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung

The cabinet, led by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, includes five deputy prime ministers and 22 ministers. The previous one had 26 ministries and agencies.
Among the members of the cabinet, three are over 60 years old and one is under 50.
The two newly ratified Deputy Prime Ministers are Hoang Trung Hai, 48, a professor of economics and a doctor of cybernetics, and Nguyen Thien Nhan, 54, also an economist.
The new cabinet also merges the Ministry of Fisheries into the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the ministries of Trade and Industry into the new Ministry of Trade and Industry. The Vietnam Committee for Sports and Physical Culture, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism and the Ministry of Culture and Information are now part of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
The Press Department, part of the former Ministry of Culture and Information, is now part of the Ministry of Information and Communication, which has been re-named from the former Ministry of Post and Telematics.
“The government and the prime minister will concentrate on pushing up administrative reforms. Especially, the government will resolutely fight against and prevent red-tape, bureaucracy, reversing a strong degradation of power, removing cumbersome processes and delays on people and enterprises, creating a favourable environment to mobilise various strengths to ensure the target of reaching a high growth rate of the economy,” Dung told the National Assembly.
Senior economist Le Dang Doanh said the moves would send out positive signals to the economy when members of the new cabinet turned out to be younger and more systematically trained than before.
He said that with the experienced and economic-minded members of cabinet, the economy’s prospects were promising under the context of Vietnam’s WTO integration.
“The big challenges the new cabinet has to cope with are to harness the increasing inflation and help increase the competitiveness of the economy to make it suitable with the pace of integration,” Doanh said.
Il Houng Lee, senior resident representative of the IMF in Vietnam, said: “The reshuffle of the government’s cabinet is just only a step of administrative reforms.”
He said that the key importance for Vietnam now “is how to sustain the high growth rate in the future.”
The government has recently targeted the GDP growth rate at 8 to 8.5 per cent on average per annum until 2010 with a constant focus on poverty reduction.
Ill said, however, that the implementation of the government’s policies was important and

the government’s policies were important and needed comprehensive reform at various levels.
The youngest Deputy Prime Minister, Hoang Trung Hai, said sustaining a high economic growth rate was a significant challenge for the government.
He said that to reach an annual growth rate at 8.5 per cent or higher, infrastructure, traffic transport and ports should be upgraded.
Professor Carlyle A. Thayer, from the Australian Defence Force Academy, said Vietnam faces a number of key challenges that the new leadership would have to address.
“On the domestic side the struggle against large-scale corruption must remain a top priority,” he said, adding that this would demand more clear laws, stricter enforcement and impartial judicial action.
“The next two domestic priorities must include continuation of administrative reforms and the privitisation of state-owned enterprises,” he said, adding that Vietnam would need to address these domestic challenges before it could face up to global economic integration and the competition for domestic producers it would bring.
“A key task for the new ministers will be human resource development and training at all levels,” he said.
Prior to the closing session on last Saturday, the parliament also approved the resolution on reducing its tenure to four years from the current five. The move is aimed at bringing the tenure on a par with that of provincial and municipal legislatures. As such, the house’s term will end in July 2011.
The revised law on anti-corruption was approved with the permit on establishment of provincial steering committees on anti-corruption headed by chairmen of the provincial people’s committees.