Australian project adds to Vietnam’s competitiveness

Can you tell us about the Restructuring for a More Competitive Vietnam (RCV) project?

It’s an AUD3 million ($2.34 million) programme that we have invested in with the Vietnamese government over the period of 2014-2016.

We’re working with the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) under the Ministry of Investment and Planning, the Vietnam Competition Authority (VCA) under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and the Policy and Strategy of Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Each of those agencies covers a different component under the programme. With CIEM in charge of the overall project implementation, we’re looking at improving the business enabling environment, so we’ve supported them in a number of areas including revisions to the Enterprise Law and Investment Law last year.

We’re working with the VCA to strengthen competition and the implementation of the competition policy in Vietnam.

We’re working with IPSARD in restructuring the rice value chain with a particular focus on Dong Thap province at the moment.

What is the project’s goal and expectations?

The critical things for us are to help improve the business enabling environment in Vietnam and to strengthen the private sector development. We see these areas as really critical. In particular, we see the agriculture sector as a priority area so we are focusing on it at the moment.

What we’re also trying to do is to support reforms across the economy, so one of the focuses of the programme is to make sure we’re conducting workshops and engaging with the public on what the objectives of the reforms are, and so they can support them when it comes to the implementation of new laws or changes to policies.

The project’s initial phase has been ongoing for almost a year. What has the project managed to achieve so far?

Some of the biggest achievements have been supporting – particularly CIEM – in their activities, as well as the changes to the Enterprise Law and Investment Law. These new laws will come into force on July 1, 2015.

Over the next period, we’re also looking at issues in streamlining business conditions, as well as looking at how we can potentially assess the implementation of Resolution 19 for improving the business environment and national competitiveness.

There’s been some early work with the VCA on looking at market concentration and we also done some work with IPSARD on the rice sector, and that will be continued over the next two years so there will be more achievements to come.

What challenges has the project come across?

The challenge, I think, is ensuring we’re targeting the right areas and ensuring both political and public support for the reforms. I think one of the ways to try to address that was to choose the right partners who have a very good understanding of what is politically feasible.

We also need to be flexible as well, so we can’t pursue reforms that are unlikely to receive support afterwards, and that means having to change our priority depending on the government’s interests and where there is support across the Party and the National Assembly. So making sure, I guess, that we have some flexibility to be able to change the programme as needed to be able to meet emerging opportunities to look at new reforms.

What were your expectations about the Spring Economic Forum?

In my view, it’s really to understand what the views are across a wide range of stakeholders, not only for the economic prospects for 2015, which has been under discussion today, but also to hear a range of views on what the constraints and issues are around market entry here in Vietnam.

I think one of the real benefits we get from this is a wide range of disciplines that we often get quite different views on and some of the views will be met with challenges. This sort of forum is a really good way to stimulate public debate about where the Vietnamese economy is going.

It’s been promising so far, with a number of positive changes we’ve seen over the last year. And if this trend can continue, there will be positive outcomes.