Socialist Republic of Vietnam

"We must increase the quality of socio-economic development, further combine economic growth with cultural development and firmly maintain national security and defence," said Prime Minister Phan Van Khai.

Mr Khai made this comments while presenting a government work report the 1997-2002 tenure at the opening of the current National Assembly session in Hanoi on March 15.

He said that Vietnam has over the past five years obtained important and comprehensive achievements in socio-economic development, maintaining the highest economic growth rate in Southeast Asia.

The country has seen remarkable progress in improving people's living conditions, developing culture and society, maintaining political stability, strengthening national security and defence, expanding external relations, and increasing Vietnam's position in the international arena.

The Prime Minister also pointed out weaknesses which Vietnam still needs to address. These include economic ineffectiveness, poor competitiveness of goods and services, unsustainable economic development, and the low quality of activities in education, science, technology, health care and culture. A number of social issues, especially social evils and traffic accidents, bureaucracy and corruption have yet to be effectively settled, he added.

With regard to outstanding achievements which Vietnam has accomplished through the government's guidance, the prime minister stressed effective measures to carry out the policy on strongly bringing into play the internal strength of all economic sectors, considering it as the decisive factor for national development. This factor becomes more urgent as external assistance wanes due to the impact of the on-going regional financial-economic crisis, he said:

"The government's efforts have stimulated production and encouraged people and businesses to operate in a dynamic way. These efforts have also stimulated domestic investment, thereby helping not just to compensate of the reduction in direct foreign investment but actually increase the total social investment (in the past four years, although the annual foreign direct investment decreased 25% as compared with 1997, the total social investment increased 10%). That has helped the country to curb the slowdown and gradually restore the economic growth rate, create more jobs, and markedly increase material and technical infrastructure, and raise the production capacity of the national economy.

On external relations and international co-operation, Prime Minister Khai said that the Vietnamese government has provided close instruction on the negotiation and signing of a land border treaty, an agreement on the demarcation of the Bac Bo (Tonkin) Gulf and a fisheries co-operation agreement, with China. Vietnam has together with other ASEAN countries and China, accelerated the process of building the Code of Conduct in the East Sea, Mr Khai noted.

He further said that, apart from consolidating a peaceful and friendly borderline with Laos, Vietnam has signed an agreement on the demarcation of an exclusive economic zone with Thailand, settled issues with Malaysia relating to the joint exploitation of overlapping sea areas, negotiated border issues with Cambodia, and settled the demarcation of exclusive economic zone with Indonesia.

The above-said important jobs, settled during the government's 1997-2002 tenure, have made great contributions to protecting national sovereignty and territorial integrity, improving the international environment, and strengthening Vietnam's friendship with neighbouring countries, Mr Khai stressed.

He said that the government's external activities, the active participation of diplomatic representative offices abroad, the activities of Vietnam's business community, and appropriate domestic economic policies have helped boost import and export in both scale and speed. Vietnam has surpassed the level of an underdeveloped country in terms of foreign trade and is above the world average rate in economic opening, Mr Khai noted.

The government has always attached importance to generating jobs and implementing poverty reduction programmes. As a result, more than one million people are provided with jobs annually. In particular, about 1.4 million jobs were created while the unemployment rate in urban areas reduced to 6.3% last year, he said while dealing with domestic affairs. (VNA)