'If a pupa wants to become a butterfly, it must try to break the cocoon from the inside'

Sharing with Dan Tri reporter, Party Central Committee member, Phu Yen Provincial Party Secretary Pham Dai Duong acknowledged that the 2021-2026 term is a special term. The first half of the term passed with many fluctuations due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the world situation, but according to the Phu Yen Secretary, hidden deep inside are great strides in the internal strength of the political, economic, social, defense and security systems, helping the country firmly overcome the difficulties of the times. "Like a chrysalis wanting to turn into a butterfly, we must make efforts, rely on internal strength to change ourselves, to break the cocoon from within, and so do we," Mr. Pham Dai Duong likened.

Looking back after nearly 40 years of renovation, Vietnam has achieved great and historic achievements and impressive developments. General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has repeatedly emphasized: "Our country has never had such a foundation, potential, position and international prestige as it does today." According to Phu Yen Secretary Pham Dai Duong, this is the foundation and important premise for us to be determined to realize the aspiration of developing a prosperous and powerful country, so that by 2025, Vietnam will be a developing country with a modern industry, surpassing the low middle income level. The further goal is that by 2030, Vietnam will be a developing country with a modern industry, high middle income, and by 2045, Vietnam will become a developed country with a high income. As one of the deeply integrated economies , Vietnam has suffered great impacts from the instability of the world economy. These impacts have greatly affected the results of the implementation of the goals of the term. However, looking at it more optimistically, Secretary Pham Dai Duong said that the unintended impacts do not only bring negative factors.

According to Mr. Duong, although growth has slowed down, the stability in socio-economic development shows that our country's economy has become much more self-reliant, maintaining major economic balances, with higher resilience to external impacts, better economic operations, and greater initiative. In the face of the general instability of the world that is still ongoing and unpredictable, the Secretary of Phu Yen believes that there needs to be high determination and breakthrough policies to make up for what has not been done in the first half of the term. In particular, Mr. Duong emphasized the need to focus on ensuring and improving people's lives, production and business activities of enterprises, focusing on core strengths, key tasks of the term, finding "opportunities" in "danger", taking advantage of opportunities to firmly overcome difficult periods to make a breakthrough. In addition, Mr. Duong hopes that personnel work will be given more attention. From the fact that there are some cadres who do not work without personal interests, cadres are afraid of making mistakes, to the painful lessons of "losing both state assets and cadres", Mr. Duong said that this reality has been and is posing greater requirements for cadre work.

"The work of creating cadre resources needs to be focused on from the grassroots. Training and fostering cadres needs to be done regularly, especially through the work of rotating and mobilizing cadres. And perhaps, one factor that needs to be considered for stronger implementation is flexibility in using and attracting high-quality human resources from outside to hold leadership and management positions in the system," Mr. Duong suggested. Also talking about cadre work, Mr. Nguyen Duc Ha (former Head of the Party Base Department, Central Organization Committee) said that right after the 13th Party Congress, we pointed out many problems with cadres and also had to pay a very high price for cadres, so since then, the Central Committee, the Politburo , and the Secretariat have focused on leadership, spending a lot of effort, intelligence, and time on cadre work, with the goal of perfecting institutions and adding strict regulations to plug all loopholes. According to Mr. Ha, regulations are only an important factor, but the most important factor is still the human factor. "Humans are the sum of social relationships, so when it comes to humans, we must use a combination of solutions. There is no panacea. Therefore, we must combine ideological, educational, administrative, organizational, economic, legal issues... to create positive changes in a person," said Mr. Ha. According to him, we should not expect too much change overnight, but need a whole process to create change.

Regarding economic development, looking from the local reality, the Secretary of Phu Yen said that the province has and is having important foundations for breakthroughs. However, the development that Phu Yen is aiming for is not simply economic, but a green economy, sustainable development. "There, people must be the beneficiaries of the achievements of development, must have a better life, a better quality of cultural and spiritual life, and more importantly, be increasingly happier", according to the Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee. With that viewpoint, Phu Yen is gradually transforming its potentials and advantages into values in socio-economic development. Emphasizing the orientation that cultural, traditional and historical values in Phu Yen must be promoted to the maximum and effectively, Secretary Pham Dai Duong expressed the aspiration that the long coastline with white sand beaches will be transformed into dynamic coastal urban areas and services, associated with the development of marine space tourism; into offshore aquaculture and fishing areas associated with seafood processing centers; into high-tech industrial zones, industries associated with the advantage of deep-water ports... In addition, the delta region once known as the "rice granary of the Central region" will become peaceful residential areas associated with agricultural development with many advantages such as rice cultivation, short-term agricultural crops. The mountainous areas adjacent to the Central Highlands have many advantages to become fruit growing areas, industrial crops with high economic value...

On the other hand, the Secretary of Phu Yen shared the orientation of strengthening domestic and international cooperation, administrative reform, improving the investment and business environment... that the province has implemented to mobilize resources. Recently, he said that Phu Yen province has approved the investment policy to complete the coastal route to develop marine tourism ; cooperate with Kyomura Group and a number of Japanese enterprises to apply new technology to fishing, exploiting and processing seafood, aiming to develop the offshore aquaculture industry. The province is also attracting high-tech application projects such as building a Data Center service complex, international telecommunications cables, aviation service industry, building seaports and industries associated with seaport advantages, renewable energy, especially offshore wind power... An important factor that Phu Yen province identified in sustainable development, according to Mr. Pham Dai Duong, is the human factor. He emphasized that people are the beneficiaries of development, but they are also the ones who create development. "Economic growth is always the goal to aim for, but higher still, it is true development, not based on numbers, but development so that each person will always have a better life tomorrow," according to Phu Yen Secretary Pham Dai Duong.

Enterprises are an important part of the economy. If we want the socio-economic development, enterprises must develop. However, after half a term facing many difficulties, the greatest wish of enterprises today is still to have institutional solutions. National Assembly delegate Nguyen Van Than (Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Small and Medium Enterprises) cited the lending mechanism for enterprises when the State Bank and credit institutions "have money but cannot lend". "For example, currently there is a requirement that enterprises must have a very strong cash flow and a good business plan before considering credit, but the majority of enterprises in Vietnam are small and medium enterprises, so accessing lending policies is very difficult," said Mr. Than.

All these difficulties, according to Mr. Than, are due to the failure to resolve the overlaps and contradictions in legal regulations. Mr. Than calls this our "dilemma". According to the Chairman of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, policy-making agencies must resolve this "dilemma", avoiding creating loopholes for petty corruption to flourish. "No matter how strong the fight against corruption is, if there are still loopholes, corruption will continue to arise, and if corruption is to be prevented, it must cause difficulties for people and businesses", Mr. Than believes that this key issue must be thoroughly resolved for the fight against corruption to be truly effective. "Enterprises are really suffering from the difficulties that have existed and are still existing. Many enterprises have to go bankrupt, temporarily suspend operations or operate at a standstill", Mr. Tran Khac Tam (National Assembly Delegate of the 13th term, Chairman of the Association of Enterprises of Soc Trang province, Vice Chairman of the Council of Associations of Enterprises of the Mekong Delta), shared that the business community has never been as difficult as it is now.

Faced with so many challenges, Mr. Tam acknowledged that the Government 's support policies have helped businesses and the economy recover to some extent, but they cannot be a miracle to help them "revive". "Therefore, while waiting for the policy mechanism to be resolved, businesses need to promote their internal strength, face difficulties and challenges to find a suitable direction," said Mr. Tam. From the businesses' perspective, Mr. Tam said that the first thing that needs to be resolved is the fear of responsibility in public agencies. After a series of cases of officials being caught up in the law due to violations and negativity, businesses feel most clearly that many officials do not dare to do or decide. This causes work to stagnate and be congested, especially in approving projects with documents that have been "held" for a very long time, affecting the production and business of businesses. Another example from reality mentioned by Mr. Tam is that after the inspection crisis, the business activities of enterprises were also affected because many vehicles expired but could not be inspected, and did not dare to go out on the road. "Traffic is the blood vessel of the economy and transportation is responsible for transporting blood to agencies. If transportation is paralyzed, the health of enterprises and the economy will decline," said the Chairman of the Soc Trang Province Business Association. The shortcomings in the tax extension policy for enterprises were also pointed out by Mr. Tran Khac Tam. According to him, it is very unfair to collect taxes when enterprises owe taxes but only pay "drips" when refunding taxes. And this is also what enterprises want to improve. Instead of enterprises speaking of another reality, Mr. Tam mentioned the issue of tightening credit with real estate that has been implemented in the past to stabilize and avoid the risk of a real estate market collapse. However, this has put real estate enterprises in a difficult situation, starving for capital.

"The lack of capital for reinvestment while debts are due and bonds are maturing makes it even more difficult for real estate businesses," said Mr. Tam. He suggested that credit institutions give priority to production sectors to have more access to preferential loans with interest rates. In addition, real estate projects with high feasibility and clear legal status should also be given preferential loans to develop and solve the housing problem for society. In addition, the representative of the Western Business Association pointed out that bottlenecks in administrative procedures are creating barriers for businesses, so it is necessary to continue to improve the investment and business environment, enhance competitiveness, and reduce costs for people and businesses. Right in Soc Trang, Mr. Tam said that the provincial leaders are resolutely implementing this. Chairman of the People's Committee of Soc Trang province Tran Van Lau affirmed that with the business's proposal, there is no such thing as the province "listening and then ignoring it", but will be handled thoroughly. In particular, the head of the provincial government also organized a "coffee with businesses" model to listen to all concerns and promptly resolve difficulties for businesses. According to Mr. Tam, this is very necessary and also what businesses are looking forward to today.

To realize the development aspiration, the Resolution of the 13th Party Congress identifies that corruption prevention and control plays an extremely important role in the current innovation process in our country. In the section on directions, tasks and solutions for socio-economic development in the 5 years of 2021-2025, the 13th Congress Document also puts forward many radical policies and solutions on corruption prevention and control. According to Deputy Chairman of the Judicial Committee Nguyen Manh Cuong, to limit corruption and negativity, it is first necessary to build a mechanism so that people cannot, dare not and do not want to be corrupt. "The most important thing is to focus on prevention, so that we do not have to fight corruption," according to Mr. Cuong. He emphasized that to prevent corruption, the policy mechanism must be synchronous, strict, not bring group benefits and have no loopholes for corruption to be exploited. "Regulations must be transparent and clear. In reality, there are many regulations that people follow without knowing whether they are right or wrong, which is very dangerous, and it is easy to fall into corruption without necessarily having bad motives," the Vice Chairman of the Judiciary Committee stated the reality.

In addition, he noted that it is necessary to do a good job of controlling conflicts of interest. "For example, if an official performs a task directly related to his or her own interests, he or she must report to his or her superiors, or a state management official must not allow his or her family members to work in areas under his or her direct management," Mr. Cuong emphasized that these factors must be controlled. The Deputy Chairman of the Judicial Committee acknowledged that each year, anti-corruption work has been increasingly promoted, but there are also opinions that fighting corruption too strongly has caused some people to be afraid of making mistakes and being responsible. Analyzing the principles, Mr. Cuong emphasized that in order for the socio-economy to develop sustainably, corruption must be fought. Many countries in the world, to achieve the development they have today, have also gone through a very drastic anti-corruption process. "Corruption benefits some people but causes huge losses of state assets, distorts the policies of the Party and the State, and makes the investment and business environment unequal. To commit corruption, they sometimes bend policies, lose people's trust, and greatly increase social costs," said Mr. Cuong. Therefore, in the reality of the fight against corruption, some officials may hesitate, but according to Mr. Cuong, most people and businesses have positive feelings, seeing that the investment environment has improved, so they will work enthusiastically and continue to produce and do business better. That means that overall, society can still detect more if it fights corruption fiercely. The Deputy Chairman pointed out that the fight against corruption is more fierce every year, and the socio-economic development index as well as the country's growth rate have increased over the years since 2000, such as last year's increase of more than 8%. Only the year heavily impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic caused growth to decline.

Therefore, Mr. Cuong affirmed that "it cannot be said that the growth decline is due to strong anti-corruption". Emphasizing that anti-corruption can cause impacts, but according to Mr. Cuong, this is a general trend, in the long run, the benefits are still greater, so it is necessary to continue this fight, besides prevention work, it is still necessary to promote the detection, handling and recovery of corrupt assets. "Corruption is like a worm, gradually eating away at the tree and causing it to rot. Even though the tree is still growing, if the worm is not caught, at some point the tree will die", Mr. Cuong compared and emphasized the need to solve this problem from the root. The Deputy Chairman of the Judicial Committee said that if the fight against corruption can only handle corruption, it means that it has only done a part, because the assets lost from corruption are very large, many people even decide to "sacrifice their father's life to strengthen their son's life". He suggested that the recovery must start early from the time of inspection and examination, if there are signs, there must be immediate detention, seizure and freezing of assets. During the investigation, prosecution and trial, preventive measures must be applied. In addition, a mechanism for handling unexplained assets is needed. "Even if it has not been proven that the assets were obtained through crime or corruption, if the origin of the assets cannot be explained, there must be a solution to consider and handle them," Mr. Cuong stated his opinion.

June 30, 2023

Dantri.com.vn