Sustainable development and the Prime Minister's orders
Thứ sáu, 24/08/2018
The Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc stated that: "Sustainable development is common responsibility of the political system, the whole society and each individual. Let's achieve all objectives together".
In the Resolution No. 19-2018/NQ-CP promulgated by the Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on May 15th 2018, the phrase "sustainable development" is used only once.
However, "main tasks and solutions to improvement of the business environment, increasing competitiveness in 2018 and the following years" mentioned in the Resolution are tasks and solutions to sustainable socio-economic development which is also the Prime Minister's orders.
3 keys to sustainable development strategy
Two months after the issue of the Resolution No. 19, at the conference on sustainable development in 2018 taking place in early July 2018, the Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc stated that: "Sustainable development is common responsibility of the political system, the whole society and each individual. Let's achieve all objectives together".
"I urge ministries, sectors and localities to focus on implementing solutions simultaneously to build an equal, secure, transparent business environment reaching the average level of the ASEAN-4 countries and aiming at the OECD's standards".

Talking about sustainable development, the Prime Minister told that economic development and sustainable development were not as simple as their name but they were derived from the process of awareness change. In other words, reaching the concept of sustainable development claimed a long process of changing our thinking and understandings of what was considered the true purpose and meaning of development.
Traditionally, economic growth is known to be an increase in GNI per capita. However, such measure of economic growth has been criticized for its limitations for a long time. For example, in spite of similarity of GNI per capita, many countries have difference in the quality of people’s life. Many countries achieve relatively high economic growth per capita but not all groups of people are entitled to enjoy benefits of such growth.
With a view to overcoming shortcomings of such measure of economic growth, the concepts of economic development and sustainable development emerged. In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly replaced eight millennium development goals with seventeen sustainable development goals inclusive of 168 targets.
Since then, opinions on sustainable development have become more inclusive and reflected the common human aspirations which are peace; green development; clean, sustainable and progressive living environment; social justice, no war and poverty. According to the Prime Minister, these are also aspirations of the Party, state and people of Vietnam.
The Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc judged that: “Vietnam sustainable development strategy has been built on the basis of 3 keys being sustainable economy, sustainable society and sustainable environment for more than 30 years”.
Regarding the economy, Vietnam economy has got many significant achievements for 30 years. Since 2010, Vietnam has been a middle-income country and strived to become an upper middle-income country in the next two decades.
In terms of society, according to the Prime Minister, thanks to high economic growth and effective distribution policy, Vietnam has got remarkable achievements in the poverty reduction. The rate of poor families in accordance with the multidimensional poverty index fell to 7% in the end of 2017. The average life expectancy has increased to about 73.5 years old so Vietnam has been the country with the highest average lifespan. Vietnam has ranked fifth globally in the Happy Planet Index and second in the Asia Pacific region.
With regard to the environment, in addition to economic and social development, the Government of Vietnam has paid much attention to environmental protection. Vietnam has handled seriously environmental pollution affairs, restructured the economy and transformed economic sectors consuming a large amount of energy and causing potentially environmental pollution into environmentally-friendly and technology-intensive economic sectors.
Up to now, Vietnam has consistently focused on economic development together with environmental protection and aimed at sustainable development. "Vietnam believes to achieve sustainable development goals of the United Nations even in advance", said the Prime Minister.
Sustainable development and questions emerging from the Industry 4.0
"I am still wondering: "Have we really been ready for the Industry 4.0? What skills do we need for the Industry 4.0? What are solutions to the Industry 4.0? Many experts have warned us of challenges of the Industry 4.0 such as labor market disruption, increasing inequality, privacy violation, cyberwarfare risk, decreasing economic scale,...", the Prime Minister expressed.
From the point of view of the Prime Minister, education is solution of all, especially young people, to having a wide knowledge, creating opportunities to own the bright future of the country and the Government pledges to ensure learning opportunities for all and not to leave behind anyone.

"It is compulsory to apply simultaneously solutions to increasing productivity, competitiveness, quality of human resources and ability to approach the Industry 4.0. Let's build a strong institution, a socialist market economy, a healthy living environment and a balanced and prosperous society together to proudly be Vietnamese", suggested the Prime Minister.
Roles of ministries and sectors
The Prime Minister’s orders are specified in the Resolution No. 19-2018/NQ-CP. Accordingly, the Government aims at focusing on improving business environment indices in order to, in 2018, rise from 8th – 18th place in the World Bank’s ranking and in particular, robustly improving the ranks of indices currently holding low place.
Specifically, the business startup rises by at least 40 places, the contractual dispute handling index rises by 10 places; the corporate bankruptcy handling index rises by 10 places.
At the same time, it is essential to complete elimination and simplification of 50% of investment and business conditions; request elimination of business sectors and industries subject to prescribed conditions in the classification list of business sectors and industries subject to prescribed conditions as specified in the Law on Investment; cut down on at least 50% of the list of commodities and products subject to specialized inspections; robustly change the state management approach from mainly pre-inspection to mainly post-inspection; completely eradicate the situation in which a commodity is subject to specialized management and inspection carried out by more than one regulatory authority; reduce the rate of imported shipment subject to specialized inspection carried out at the customs clearance checkpoint from 25 – 27% as currently reported to under 10%.
The Government also requires facilitating application of information technology to deal with administrative procedures and provide public services online and by the end of 2018, most of the public services which are common and related to people and enterprises are provided at the 3rd and 4th level.
Besides, the Government requires the Ministry of Planning and Investment to preside over and cooperate with ministries and Finance, Labor – War Invalids and Social Affairs authorities and Vietnam’s Social Security offices and other relevant agencies in improving the rank of business startup index to the targeted rank; raise the place of the business startup index by at least 40 places in rank; to ensure release of corporate information coincides with registration of enterprise establishment; and is completed by June 2018; to recommend reducing corporate information release fee by at least 50%.
The Ministry of Finance is obliged to continue to implement measures for improving the tax payment index according to the objectives set out in the Resolution No.19; to strive to reduce tax payment time (excluding time of payment of social security contributions) to 119 hours; to publicly disclose the tax database, assure inspection of 100% of tax refund claims in question and strive to, by 2020, ensure that 100% of taxpayer’s complaints and appeals are handled within the legally prescribed duration; to ensure public disclosure and transparency of regulations laid down in the Law on Tax Management, processes for inspection, complaint resolution and VAT refund.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade has to preside over and collaborate with ministries, entities and local authorities in monitoring and overseeing sufficient and consistent enforcement of streamlining of regulations on investment and business conditions, and enhancement of effectiveness in state management; continuing to check and propose repeal and simplification of regulations on investment and business conditions; reforming and promoting effectiveness in state management.
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment is responsible for presiding over and cooperating with ministries, People’s Committees of centrally-affiliated cities and provinces in taking necessary actions to reduce the time of registration of ownership and use of property to 20 days; revoking unnecessary documents, simplifying information included in submitted documentation, formalities and building electronic connections in handling administrative procedures for grant of land use right certificate, land allocation, land lease, land registration and grant of certificate of ownership of construction works, as well as administrative procedures for determination of financial obligations arising from land.
The Ministry of Construction takes responsibility for continuing to accelerate reform of construction license-related administrative processes and procedures; apply information technology and carry out construction licensing procedures online (including assessment of fundamental designs, engineering designs and grant of construction license) in order to reduce costs, particularly unofficial costs.
The State Bank of Vietnam shall continue to effectively implement measures for improving and clarifying credit information, and provide enterprises, organizations and individuals in all economic sectors with equality and advantages to have access to credit funds according to market regulations.
Regarding to tourism, its tasks and solutions are clarified in the Resolution No. 19. Accordingly, the Government requires the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to research and develop significant tourism products such as marine tours, cultural tours and ecological tours; locating marine leisure and holiday destinations that are fascinating to tourists; develop more new and promising tourism products such as business combined tours, community volunteer tours, adventure tours, medical and healthcare tours, golf tours, leisure and recreational tours, theme park tours, conference and art performance tours; promoting training and education of tourism human resource, including executive officers, managers, administrators and vocational workers.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will also develop tourism infrastructure and tourist accommodation establishments that have high quality and promoting tourism service quality by checking legislative regulations on tourism and related services; rescinding or requesting rescission of improper and outdated regulations; carrying out robust reform of administrative procedures; improving business freedom; increasing safety level and reducing business costs; standardizing and controlling quality of products, services and amenities ancillary to the tourism industry; ensuring safety, security, environmental sanitation and sustainable development.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will simultaneously encourage enterprises to open overseas tourism marketing offices, participate in large international tourism fairs and advertising campaigns via the international and national media as well as e-marketing activities; pay attention to advertising tours at source markets.
By Office of Cleaner Production and Sustainable Production and Consumption