Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh emphasized that only high growth can overcome the middle-income trap and achieve strategic goals.
” Only desk, no back table”
This morning (February 21), Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh chaired the Government Conference with localities to implement the Central Committee’s conclusions and the National Assembly and Government’s resolutions on economic growth.
Speaking at the Conference, the Prime Minister emphasized that GDP growth is the most important factor in achieving the above two goals. GDP growth will impact the scale of the economy, per capita income, and GDP scale ranking in the world.
“There is no other way, we must maintain high and sustainable growth continuously from now until 2045, only then can we overcome the middle-income trap and rise up, achieve strategic goals, realize aspirations in the new era, develop richly, civilized, prosperous, people are increasingly prosperous and happy”, the Prime Minister emphasized.
Recently, the Government has proposed that the Central Government and the National Assembly strive to achieve GDP growth of 8% or more in 2025 and double-digit growth in the coming years. The Central Government issued Conclusion 123 on January 24, the National Assembly passed a Resolution on February 19, and the Government assigned the 2025 growth target to localities and ministries.
“The Party has directed, the Government is unified, the National Assembly agrees, the People support, the Fatherland expects, so we can only discuss action, not retreat. The question is how to do it?”, the Prime Minister asked.
Growth must still control inflation
According to the Prime Minister, international experience and the latest announcement from the World Bank (WB) show that over the past 30 years, only 34 economies have succeeded in escaping the middle-income trap to become high-income countries, while 108 countries have not yet overcome it.
Because in general, the economies that became high-income countries maintained high growth for about 30 years, such as Japan’s average growth of 11.5%/year from 1951-1973, South Korea’s growth of 9.6%/year in the period 1963-1996, China’s growth of about 10%/year in the period 1978-2011, Taiwan (China) grew by 8.9%/year from 1952-1989; Singapore’s growth of 8.5%/year from 1961-1997.
According to the announcement of the Ministry of Planning and Investment, Vietnam has grown by about 6.4% in nearly 40 years of renovation since 1986. In 2024, Vietnam’s GDP will reach over 470 billion USD, with per capita income of about 4,700 USD. If GDP growth is at about 7% per year, it will be very difficult to achieve the two 100-year goals.
“Thus, in the next two decades, we need to accelerate to achieve the set strategic goals. The road ahead is still very arduous,” the Prime Minister stated.
Therefore, in 2025, we have to do a lot of work, including increasing GDP growth by at least 8% to create momentum, position, and force for double-digit growth in the coming years. The Prime Minister affirmed that this is an especially important but also very difficult task, requiring the drastic, synchronous, joint efforts and consensus of the entire political system, business community, and people of the whole country.
“If we want the whole country to grow at over 8%, all ministries, localities, and sectors must grow at over 8%, domestic and foreign enterprises, collective economy, private economy… must all grow at over 8%, it cannot be just a few localities, a few ministries, a few enterprises that grow high and then pull the whole country up, this is very difficult,” said the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister noted that growth must be high but sustainable, and that it is necessary to maintain macroeconomic stability, control inflation, ensure progress, fairness, social security, and protect a clean, green, and beautiful environment. Progress, fairness, social security, and the environment must not be sacrificed to pursue mere economic growth.
“The goal is like that, if we don’t do it, we won’t get it done. Therefore, there is a lot to do and we must make great efforts. We must be highly determined, make great efforts, work with focus, especially public investment, and finish each task and do it well. This is the time for us to accelerate, break through, reach the finish line, and take advantage of every opportunity for the country to move forward quickly, move forward strongly, and fly high and far. The world situation is changing very quickly, we must seize opportunities, turn difficulties and challenges into motivation, the more difficulties and challenges, the more efforts we must make,” said the Prime Minister.
According to the Prime Minister, to achieve growth, we must renew traditional driving forces (investment, export and consumption, diversifying markets, products and supply chains), promote new growth drivers such as digital economy, green economy, sharing economy, circular economy, knowledge economy, etc., and exploit new development spaces such as marine space, underground space, and outer space. To do so, we must have resources in terms of human resources, capital, technology, institutions, etc.