The economic restructuring plan for the 2021-2025 period, approved by the 15th National Assembly during its second session, will focus on stepping up digital transformation and innovations. According to the Director of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), Tran Thi Hong Minh, big changes in the world and Vietnam after the COVID-19 pandemic require the country to accelerate the process of economic restructuring. If the economic restructuring is slowed down, it will be difficult for Vietnam to narrow the development gap with the world, overcome the middle-income trap, effectively respond to climate change, take advantage of the fourth Industrial Revolution, and benefit from international integration.
According to a news report, the plan aims to form a suitable and effective structure in each industry and field and between industries, fields, and the whole economy. It also looks to develop national products based on new or high technologies and create a breakthrough in the competitiveness of key economic sectors. It intends to create significant changes in the growth model and productivity and increase the autonomy, adaptability, and resilience of the economy.
The digital economy and urban economy are the new features of the 2021-2025 economic restructuring plan. The government will implement solutions to perfect institutions and expand scientific and technological applications in all fields and develop the “business force” by connecting small and medium-sized enterprises with big and FDI ones. The plan also stressed the need for leaders of industries and sectors to change their ways of doing to increase the efficiency of economic restructuring.
Earlier this month, the Deputy Prime Minister, Vu Duc Dam, signed a decision approving a project to promote information technology (IT) application and digital transformation in trade promotion activities in the 2021-30 period. The project will improve the quality and efficiency of activities in the government’s trade promotion agencies, firms, cooperatives and household businesses. It will raise public awareness and the capacity of IT applications and digital transformation to promote foreign and domestic trade, contributing to the restructuring of the industry-trade sector.
The initiative strives to build a trade promotion ecosystem and a database by 2025. All administrative procedures in the field will be available on the National Public Service Portal with 90% of businesses being satisfied with the process launched on the virtual platform. The ecosystem must be built in a consistent and concerted structure in accordance with the framework of Vietnam’s e-government development strategy.
OpenGov Asia reported recently that the Vietnamese Internet economy could reach US$220 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) by 2030, ranking second in Southeast Asia after Indonesia. It is forecasted that the country’s digital economy will see a growth rate of 31% this year over the same period last year, reaching US$21 billion. The results are welcoming in the context of the shrinking online travel market. If this growth is maintained, Vietnam’s GMV is expected to reach US$57 billion by 2025. Since COVID-19 reappeared in the first half of this year, the country has added 8 million digital consumers, of whom more than half come from non-metro areas. Notably, 99% of these new consumers expressed their intention to continue using online services post-pandemic, showing a very high level of adoption of digital services and products of users in the country.
