A TALK WITH GUESTS FROM MINISTRY OF UNIFICATION OF SOUTH KOREA

Dr. Tran Dinh Lam just attended a report titled “Vietnam’s Renovation” together with guests from the Ministry of Unification of South Korea at the conference hall of Star City hotel, HCM City, on November 20.

Present at the talk were more than 100 guests and 20 educational committee members of the Ministry of Unification of Korea. Dr. Tran Dinh Lam had a presentation on the remarkable stages of the economic reform process in Vietnam. In the period in which South and North Korea are trying to reach unification, Dr. Lam hopes that the mistakes Vietnam used to make after its reunification will be more or less useful lessons for South Korea.

While the economy of East and West Germany, after their unification, is lead to a market-oriented one which helped the country strongly develop, Vietnam established its economy towards the planning model of the North after the two regions were reunified, causing many consequences. Moreover, the mistakes after its reunification made Vietnam’s economy stagnant for a long period of time. From 1976 to 1986, Vietnam had to receive aids from China and Russia, which was up to US$2 billion a year, and the inflation rate sometimes reached higher than 770%.

It was thanks to the timely policy of renovation in 1986 that helped Vietnam’s economy achieve strong growth and development like today. The state used to play the major role in the economy, but nowadays the private sector is most important to the economy. The state’s responsibility is to manage and encourage the private sector to thrive. Vietnam has also started to open to the global market, improve international relations, call for foreign investment and develop multilateral international cooperation, etc.

Nowadays, many problems still remain in Vietnam. For example, the education system is unsatisfactory; both infrastructure and human factor are poor; the red tape mechanism still persists. However, thanks to timely renovations, the strong points of the economy have been effectively promoted. One of the strengths of Vietnam these days is to have a unified and centralized political system which creates a foundation for a sustainable development of the society and ensures the economic security. Moreover, the fact that the cost of Vietnamese labour is quite cheap attracts foreign investors in the open door period at the present.

Through the talk on economic reform, Dr. Lam hopes and believes that South Korea will learn from Vietnam’s mistakes so that it can have an appropriate economic strategy for its own after unifying the North and South.

One of the issues concerning the guests is whether the North and South Korea can reach unification, in the viewpoint of Vietnam’s government and whether Vietnam supports the unification of Korea. They also pay attention to the dispute over the East Sea between Vietnam and China.

At the meeting, Dr. Lam hopes that there will be more aids and collaboration in education with South Korea as well as in other sectors, contributing to promote the relations between the two countries.

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