New leadership driving development agenda

The 11th sitting, also the last meeting of the 14th National Assembly, kicked off in Hanoi on March 24 morning. Photo: VNA

According to National Assembly (NA) Secretary Nguyen Hanh Phuc, the 11th session of the 14th National Assembly will open on March 24 and conclude on April 8. It will especially consider and elect key state personnel, including the new state president, vice state president, prime minister, deputy prime ministers, chairperson and deputy chairpersons of the National Assembly, members of the cabinet, chief justice of the Supreme People’s Court, and prosecutor general of the Supreme People’s Procuracy.

After the election results, the new NA chairperson, state president, and prime minister will make their oaths before the NA, constituents, and the wider public.

Earlier at the second meeting of the 13th Party Central Committee held on March 8-9, votes took place on the introduction of candidates for the posts of state president, prime minister, and NA chairperson for the 2021-2026 tenure. In addition, the Party Central Committee also voted on the Politburo recommendations for ministerial level appointments to the cabinet and other central state agencies. The lists of those eligible for the positions were submitted to the NA for voting under the regulations of the law.

In early February, the 13th National Party Congress was organised and elected the 13th Party Central Committee with 200 members, including 180 official and 20 alternate members. The 13th Party Central Committee then convened its first plenum to elect a Politburo comprising 18 members.

These members included Nguyen Phu Trong - the Party General Secretary, State President; Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc; Pham Minh Chinh - head of the Party Central Committee’s Organisation Commission; and Vuong Dinh Hue - Party Secretary of the Hanoi Party Committee and head of the delegation of National Assembly deputies (14th tenure) of Hanoi.

Also at the plenum, Party General Secretary Trong was re-elected as General Secretary of the Party Central Committee in the 13th tenure.

The new leadership is expected to drive the domestic economy forward and accomplish many major macroeconomic goals for the 2021-2025 period. Specifically, the Party Central Committee has adopted an average annual GDP growth rate of 6.5-7 per cent; a level of $4,700–5,000 in per capita GDP by 2025; a ratio of over 25 per cent for processing and manufacturing industry in GDP; a ratio of 20 per cent for digital economy in GDP; a ratio of 45 per cent for total factor productivity in economic growth by 2025; and a rate of over 6.5 per cent in the increase of labour productivity.

In addition, the country’s new leaders will also have to find ways to improve the economy’s competitiveness, with a better business and investment climate offered to enterprises and investors, especially domestic and foreign private ones.

Vietnam currently has nearly 800,000 operational enterprises, of which about 98 per cent are of small and medium size. According to the General Statistics Office, in 2020, there were just under 135,000 newly-established enterprises, with a total registered capital of over VND2.23 quadrillion ($97 billion), employing more than one million labourers. This was down 2.3 per cent in the number of registered enterprises, but up 29.25 per cent in registered capital.

In the first two months of this year, the economy saw more than 18,000 newly-established enterprises with total registered capital of VND334.8 trillion ($14.55 billion), employing 172,800 new labourers – up 4 per cent in the number of enterprises, 52.2 per cent in capital, and 9.7 per cent in the number of labourers as compared to those in the same period of last year.

The average registered capital of each newly-founded business in the two months of the year is VND18.5 billion ($804,300), up 46.4 per cent on-year.

The current leaders of Vietnam are Party General Secretary, State President Nguyen Phu Trong, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, and NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan. Under their stewardship, the economy grew to 6.8 per cent annually on average in the 2016-2019 period. In 2020, the rate reached only 2.91 per cent, but Vietnam was one of only 26 economies in the world to achieve positive economic growth.