Party General Secretary and State President Nguyễn Phú Trọng speaks at the 13th National Party Congress.  — VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam will strive to become a socialist-oriented developed nation by the middle of the 21st century, Party leader Nguyễn Phú Trọng has said in the opening session of the 13th National Party Congress in Hà Nội on Tuesday.

Speaking while presenting the 12th tenure Party Central Committee’s report on documents submitted to the Congress, Party General Secretary and State President Nguyễn Phú Trọng said the goal was one of the overall objectives in the political report for the 2021-2025 tenure and beyond.

Other objectives include enhancing the Party’s leadership, ruling capacity and effectiveness, building a clean and strong Party and political system in all aspects to consolidate people’s trust in the Party, State and the socialist system, while also promoting innovation, aspirations for developments and national unity.

The report also has targets for pushing the đổi mới (renewal) policy forward, national industrialisation and modernisation and defending the homeland as well as maintaining peace and stability.

It determines concrete goals based on the principles of ensuring scientificness and practicality and making appropriate changes in each stage of national development by making use of international experience and globally-recognised development standards.

Specifically, by 2025, Việt Nam hopes to become a developing nation with modernity-oriented industry and surpass the low-middle-income level.

By 2030, it aims to be a developing nation with modern industry and upper-middle-income level.

By 2045, the country is set to become a developed nation with a high-income level.

The past tenure saw Việt Nam's economic growth rate being kept at quite high rate, about 5.9 per cent, with stable macroeconomic foundation and strong growth in exports and social investment. In 2020, the country has also received widespread recognition for its competent handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping the infection and death number low which allows the economy to resume and grow, Trọng said.

Despite the many achievements, Việt Nam is still facing difficulties and challenges. Economic growth rate still not yet to match the true potentials, the autonomy and resilience of the economy are not high enough.

The State economic sector, especially State-owned enterprises, are still operating inefficiently, facing numerous difficulties and bottlenecks. The domestic private sector and the foreign-invested sector are enjoying rapid but not sustainable development, according to the report.

Tasks and solutions

According to Party General Secretary and President Trọng, the 13th National Congress is a key milestone so it's essential to properly implement tasks and solutions set in the documents submitted to the Congress to bring the country to a new state of development with several priorities, including the building and rectification of the Party and State, as well as building a socialist rule-of-law State and a pure and strong political system.

There must be harmonisation between the Party building and rectification, as well as between Party building and protection, Trọng said. He stressed the need to persistently pursue and creatively develop Marxism-Leninism and Hồ Chí Minh Thought and raise the leadership and effectiveness of the Party.

The fight against corruption would be continued, while "self-evolution" and “self-transformation” within the Party would be curbed.

Attention would be paid to renewing and perfecting the organisational apparatus of the political system in parallel with the consolidation and improvement of the quality of Party organisations at the grassroots level and the contingent of Party members.

The State's capacity and efficiency will be improved in terms of institutions and in the implementation of the Party's guidelines and resolutions.

The work of the Fatherland Front and socio-political organisations are set to be renewed while the rights and interests of youth members and the people will be well protected.

Economic goals

The report also reveals that Việt Nam will aim to transform its economic growth paradigm with a stronger focus on industrialisation and modernisation, science and technology development, innovation and high-quality human resources development.

As part of the transformation efforts, Vietnamese enterprises will be encouraged to participate in new industries, agriculture will be restructured towards eco-farming, modern rural areas and civilised farmers, the sea economy will be pursued sustainably and in line with upholding the country’s sea and island sovereignty and the service sector will receive due attention.

Another goal is to carry out synchronised measures to soon perfect the socialist-oriented market mechanism; improve governance and management capacity and efficiency; better handle the relationship between the State, market and society, and between businesses and the public; and resolve bottlenecks that hamper the growth of the country, especially institutions and policies.

Efforts will be expended to enhance inter-sectoral, intra-regional and inter-regional connectivity and links and promote the participation into global value chains or production networks to open up new development spaces.

The role of State-owned enterprises will be upheld in the opening of supply chains and value chains, especially in key sectors and industries that the State needs to control, but the private sector will still enjoy every favourable condition to grow fast, sustainably, and strongly in terms of scale and quality.

The focus in the policy to attract foreign investment will shift from quantity to quality, where projects with modern technology, high added value, modern governance models, and strong ties to domestic economic sectors will be prioritised.

The digital economy and digital society will be pursued robustly to create breakthroughs in the economy’s productivity, quality, efficiency and competitiveness.

According to the report, the Party and the State will strive to inspire patriotism, pride, resilience, humanitarianism, solidarity, social consensus and the ambition to develop the country among all Vietnamese people; build mechanisms and policies to promote the contributions of all Vietnamese people.

The development of the Vietnamese culture will involve both the promotion of the values of the nation with the acquisition of humanity’s quintessential cultural values so culture will serve as the spiritual foundation and an inner source of strength for the country’s socio-economic development and international integration.

Social policies will be ensured to promote social equity and improve the quality of life and happiness of Vietnamese people, multidimensional poverty reduction efforts will be continued comprehensively and sustainably and the delivery of basic social services will be ensured and enhanced – especially for the poor and disadvantaged groups in society.

The 13th National Party Congress. — VNA/VNS Photo

Security and defence priorities

Regarding security and defence, the goals in the report are the maintenance of the country’s independence and autonomy; strengthening national defence and security capacity; improving the quality and efficiency of foreign affairs and international integration; defending the country’s independence, sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity; and maintaining a peaceful and stable environment for national development.

The military is hoped to become streamlined, capable, and robust by 2025, with the setting up of modern forces by 2030 and building a modern military starting from 2030, while the police forces are set to become capable and modern people’s security forces by 2030.

Security tasks involve the timely detection and effective handling of complex security and order issues, and timely suppression of various types of crimes – especially organised crimes, transnational crimes, high-tech crimes and drug rings.

Foreign affairs and international integration will be promoted, with stronger ties between Party diplomacy, State diplomacy and people-to-people diplomacy; building a modern diplomatic foundation with a focus on defence and security diplomacy to protect the country from afar, on economic diplomacy to boost economic development (aiming to take full advantage of the opportunities brought about by international integration, especially free trade deals), and on expanding cultural diplomacy to promote the image and brand value of Việt Nam to the world.

National unity 

The report also sets promoting national unity, socialist democracy, strengthening legislation and ensuring social discipline as important goals.

Việt Nam will aim to harmoniously handle the relationship between the interests of different social classes while ensuring that all ethnic groups are equal and united, respect and support each other. The focus will be on effectively implementing ethnic and religious policies, with special policies to deal with difficulties for ethnic minority groups and to ensure religious solidarity and national unity. All plots and activities aiming to destroy national unity and hinder national development will be strictly dealt with.

The role of the people will be promoted, with citizens central to the country’s development strategy. Several key principles will be upheld, including socio-political proactiveness, the rights and responsibilities of people to take part in building and promoting the Party, building a socialist law-governed State, Fatherland Front and socio-political organisations, building a contingent of Party members, officials and public servants; having a mechanism to promote potential, strength and innovation ability, and mobilising people to take part in economic development and social development management.

Ensuring open and transparent information and the right to be informed and access to information for people from all walks of life is another goal, as is effectively implementing direct democracy and representative democracy, particularly democracy at the grassroots level.

The report also aims at speeding up the completion and construction of a united, synchronous, modern, feasible, transparent and stable legal system that is easy to access and of high international competitiveness, ensuring the rights and legitimate interests of people, promoting innovation and ensuring requirements for sustainable economic and social development and national defence and security.  

Effective use of land and resources

In terms of land and natural resources, the report aims for tightening their management and effective use, while enhancing environmental protection and implementing measures to adapt to climate change.

It also calls for building strategies and completing the management mechanism system to effectively use resources with a focus on land, water and minerals, which will require building legal system, policies and mechanism to supervise resources and environment and climate change, forecasting and giving warnings about natural resources, pollution and environmental disasters and diseases.

Violations of natural resources and environmental regulations will be prevented and strictly punished. International co-operation in sharing information, studying, managing, exploiting and effectively and sustainably using natural resources will be promoted, as will efforts to ensure biosecurity, environmental security, water security, food security and energy security.

Another target is the harmonious settlement of the relationship between economic development and environmental protection. This includes developing the green economy with low waste, low carbon and greenhouse gas emission reduction and encouraging the development of circular economy models.

Improving climate change resistance and resilience of the infrastructure system and the economy while taking smart solutions to adapt to climate change in agro-forestry and fishery and other economic sectors are also mentioned.

Changes in implementing strategic breakthroughs

Party General Secretary Trong said during the implementation of these key tasks and solutions, there was a need to focus investment on resources and to pay attention to leadership to create changes in implementing the three strategic development breakthroughs put forward by the 11th and 12th National Party Congresses, which would be supplemented at this year’s congress to match the new development period.

These efforts would include completing institutions key to the development of the socialist market-oriented economy. The priority would be on completing the legal system, mechanism and polities to create a favourable, healthy and equal business and investment environment and promoting innovation; mobilising and effectively managing and using all resources for development, particularly land and finance; enhancing decentralisation and supervision and examination.

Another focus would be developing human resources, particularly high-quality human resources, based on improving education and training quality with a connection with a mechanism to employ, use and well treat talented people; and promoting scientific and technological research, transfer and application.

In addition, it would be important to build a modern infrastructure system in terms of socio-economy, environment, national defence and security, giving priority to the development of key national projects relating to transport and climate change adaptation; and paying attention to developing information and telecommunications infrastructure, creating a national digital transformation platform, developing the digital economy and digital society. — VNS