Overcoming difficulties and challenges, opening up and mobilizing resources for socio-economic development, building a rich, beautiful and civilized Vinh Phuc province.

Editor's note: On the occasion of the new year 2025, comrade Tran Duy Dong, Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee, Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee, gave an interview to Vinh Phuc Newspaper about the province's socio -economic development situation in 2024 and solutions to promote growth in the coming years.

Dear Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee, in the context of many local difficulties, how has the Provincial People's Committee led and managed so that the province can achieve 15/15 socio-economic development targets in 2024?

Last year, our province had many profound changes in politics - economy - society with great difficulties and challenges, affecting the implementation of assigned tasks in 2024. In addition, the global economic situation negatively affected the province's production and business activities. The newly promulgated Land Law led to changes in many processes, procedures, and unit prices, greatly affecting site clearance and slowing down the investment progress of many projects. The government apparatus at all levels is embarking on mergers and streamlining, causing some sectors and fields to not fully focus on professional work.

Closely following the direction of the Provincial Party Standing Committee, the Provincial Party Executive Committee, the Provincial People's Committee's Party Committee, the Provincial People's Committee has a unified viewpoint in leadership, direction and administration, focusing on strictly implementing the directions of the Central Party, the National Assembly and the Government on comprehensive development of socio-economic, national defense and security fields.

Our province continues to promote decentralization, delegation of authority, and resource allocation, associated with the responsibilities of heads of agencies and organizations. The Provincial People's Committee regularly inspects, supervises, and reviews existing problems in state management in all sectors and fields, while resolutely resolving long-standing problems, and is concerned with finding solutions to unlock resources to create new momentum for growth, attract investment, and develop the economy.

Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee Tran Duy Dong, Singaporean Ambassador to Vietnam Jaya Ratnam, ASEAN BAC Chairman Oudet Souvannavong, YCH Group Executive Chairman Rober Yap and delegates performed the ceremony to announce the new vision of Vinh Phuc ICD Logistics Center (SuperPortTM Vietnam). Photo: Khanh Linh

The Provincial People's Committee has established a Steering Committee to study and implement macroeconomic policies to promptly and effectively direct and operate economic development policies and solutions according to the developed scenario; closely monitor domestic and international developments to proactively assess, advise or propose tasks and solutions to minimize negative impacts; renew old growth drivers, accelerate the contribution of new growth drivers, promote the development of industries, fields and localities.

The Chairman and Vice Chairmen of the Provincial People's Committee directly inspect, urge, promptly remove difficulties and obstacles, speed up the progress of social housing investment projects, urban areas, industrial parks, industrial clusters (IPs-IPs), public investment, especially key projects, creating momentum for socio-economic development of the province; urge Directors of departments, branches, Chairmen of People's Committees of districts and cities to ensure the progress of implementing assigned targets and tasks.

The leaders of the Provincial People's Committee conducted many inspections and worked with localities and grassroots organizations, closely following the situation to direct, urge, and handle recommendations from localities, people, and businesses. Thereby, many problems and difficulties were resolved right at the grassroots level.

At the same time, the province focuses on perfecting mechanisms and policies to create development momentum; enhancing the removal of bottlenecks in land, resources, environment, investment projects, and public investment; synchronously and effectively implementing mechanisms and policies to support enterprises, especially small and medium enterprises; and creating maximum conditions for enterprises to maintain stable production and business.

All levels and sectors in the province focus on administrative reform, improving the investment and business environment, simplifying, reducing time and costs for businesses; improving the provincial competitiveness index, digital transformation index; removing difficulties for businesses. The whole province focuses on removing difficulties, speeding up the progress of compensation, site clearance, and implementation of public investment projects, especially for key projects, industrial parks, inter-regional projects, and urban infrastructure works.

With the determination of all levels, sectors and the efforts of the business community, in 2024, our province overcame unprecedented difficulties and challenges. The province's socio-economic situation continued to develop, achieving important and quite comprehensive results in many fields.

Growth has improved every quarter, reaching and exceeding the plan for 15/15 main economic, social and environmental targets. The structure of economic sectors continues to have positive shifts. Economic growth in the following quarter is higher than the previous quarter. Production and business sectors, especially industry, have recovered positively, achieving a good growth rate compared to 2023. The province's agricultural, forestry and fishery production continues to be stable, and the epidemic situation is well controlled.

The fields of trade, services, transportation, tourism, import and export have recovered well. The fields of culture, society, health, education, and social security have all received investment attention, achieving many encouraging results.

We have done a good job in selecting and calling citizens to join the army, completing 100% of the assigned targets in 2024 and are implementing the stages and steps in selecting and calling citizens to join the army in 2025; effectively implementing military policies, military rear areas, and policies for people with revolutionary contributions.

The political security situation and social order and safety in the province continue to be maintained stably. The police force proactively grasps the situation, absolutely protects targets, key areas, and important political, cultural, and social events taking place in the province.

The above results stem from the consensus and determination to overcome difficulties of the Party Executive Committee, the Provincial Party Standing Committee, the Provincial People's Committee, Party committees and authorities at all levels, and the great support of the people and business community in the province. That also proves the desire for development, the ability and spirit of not giving up and determined to rise up of the people of Vinh Phuc.

What is the significance of the outstanding results in education, healthcare and social security for the sustainable development of the province, sir?

In 2024, our province successfully organized many cultural activities to celebrate major holidays and important events; hosted the Southeast Asian Women's Volleyball Championship, organized the 2024 National Archery Championship, the National Classical Wrestling and Freestyle Wrestling Club Championship. Our province also organized and implemented many cultural and tourism programs and events to stimulate tourism, creating a buzz. Historical relics, tangible and intangible cultural heritages were preserved, embellished, and their values ​​were promoted. The work of directing and organizing the construction of a model Cultural Village continued to be implemented. The movement of the People Uniting to Build a Cultural Life was actively responded to by the people.

The work of reviewing and planning the network of educational and training facilities continues to be implemented to improve the effectiveness of management. The quality of mass education continues to be improved. 2024 is the second consecutive year that Vinh Phuc ranks first in the country in terms of average national high school exam scores, with 4/9 subjects having the highest average scores. The quality of the province's key education continues to be achieved at a high level, expanding

In many student groups, many educational activities and outstanding achievements. In the 2023-2024 school year, our province has 89 students winning national excellent student awards, including 6 first prizes, 29 second prizes, 33 third prizes and 21 encouragement prizes.

The health sector has innovated service style and attitude, improved medical ethics; built green - clean - beautiful, safe and civilized hospitals, aiming to provide comprehensive care for patients. The grassroots health network continues to be consolidated and improved. Hospitals and health units focus on investing in improving the quality of examination and treatment. Some health units have deployed new techniques, advanced and specialized techniques. Medicines and medical supplies are guaranteed. Health sector indicators have all been achieved and exceeded the set plan, such as: the number of doctors/10,000 people reached 16.9; the number of hospital beds/10,000 people reached 43.6; the rate of population with health insurance reached over 95%.

Labor, employment, poverty reduction and social security have covered all subjects. Last year, the whole province created jobs for 19.5 thousand workers. Social protection policies and regimes were amended to expand the subjects and increase the level of benefits. Policies and regimes for people with revolutionary contributions were implemented fully, promptly, accurately and to the right subjects. The work of gratitude was supported by Party committees at all levels, authorities, organizations and people. Poverty reduction work was implemented synchronously and promptly, the poverty rate decreased to 0.44%.

These results directly contribute to improving people's enjoyment, improving the quality of human resources in the province, strengthening people's trust in the leadership of Party committees and authorities at all levels, and promoting sustainable economic development.

Investment attraction is a bright spot in the province's socio-economic picture in 2024. What factors help Vinh Phuc maintain its attractiveness to investors?

The Provincial People's Committee has focused on improving the investment and business environment, proactively inviting large domestic and foreign economic groups and enterprises to invest in the province. The province has paid attention to the difficulties and problems of enterprises and promptly provided guidance and support to resolve them. The Provincial People's Committee, departments and branches have organized many conferences to receive information and dialogue to remove difficulties for enterprises in production and business.

Investment promotion activities have been promoted, including implementing friendly cooperation with Chungcheongbuk Province (Korea), Pernik Province (Bulgaria), and Toscana Region (Italy). Provincial leaders have worked with many corporations and enterprises to learn about investment policies and procedures in the province. We have organized important events to promote investment attraction such as the Conference on Sustainable Development of Industrial Parks in Vinh Phuc Province, the Forum "Comprehensive Green Solutions for Industrial Parks and Investment Promotion in Vinh Phuc Province", the meeting to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Vietnam Entrepreneurs' Day, Techfest VinhPhuc 2024 "Pioneering Creativity, Aspiration for Innovation", attracting the participation of many ministries, branches, experts, domestic and foreign investors. In addition, the province promptly provides official, public, transparent and objective information on local political tasks, policies and management solutions of the Provincial People's Committee in removing difficulties, promoting production, business, economic development and ensuring social security.

The above activities have strengthened the economic confidence of the business community in our province, affirming that Vinh Phuc is a good land for domestic and foreign enterprises. The result of attracting FDI capital reached 637 million USD (an increase of more than 50% compared to the plan), attracting DDI capital is estimated at 5,500 billion VND. The number of newly registered enterprises in the province is estimated at 1,550 enterprises with a total registered capital of about 13 trillion VND. In the province, there are 9 industrial parks in operation and 3 industrial parks under construction, promising to become the destination of many large enterprises in the coming year.

Fortunately, in the last days of the year, many delegations of enterprises and large economic groups came to Vinh Phuc to seek investment opportunities such as KinderWorld Group, FPT, Vingroup, VPV, SDLINK Company Limited, Vietnam Young Entrepreneurs Association, Sao Do Entrepreneurs Club, Pacific Construction Group... Some large economic groups want to develop urban area and high-end resort projects in the province.

These are optimistic signals for Vinh Phuc's economic development at a new level, which is the basis for improving budget revenue in the coming time. The problem is that Vinh Phuc does not sit and wait for investors but must build good policies, an open investment environment and change the way of promoting investment towards proactively inviting domestic and foreign investors in the fields in which the province is attracting investment.

Rich and beautiful Vinh Yen. Photo: Ha Phuong

According to you, what are the current challenges to the socio-economic development of our province?

The world and regional situation is still unpredictable. In the province, there is not much room for development, especially land and resources. Geographical location is no longer the province's strength due to convenient transportation connections compared to before. Attracting investment capital continues to have fiercer competition from neighboring localities and in the region. The private economic sector is mainly medium, small and micro-sized, with low competitiveness, low management level, and limited access to resources.

Violations in bidding activities, implementation of construction projects, urban areas, and housing areas are difficult to overcome and require a lot of time to handle. State budget revenue has not increased for many years. Domestic investment attraction is low. The amount of capital registered to establish enterprises tends to decrease while the number of dissolved enterprises increases. Industrial production has not fully recovered, reducing the production output of some key products contributing to growth and budget revenue. The effectiveness of tourism development is not high when the number of visitors to the province is high but tourism revenue is still low. The handling of existing problems and violations of land laws in some places is facing many difficulties. The progress of construction of centralized domestic waste treatment plants still has many obstacles. Human resources in the health sector in some fields do not meet professional requirements, especially in the medical examination and treatment sector; there is a lack of modern medical equipment; high-quality human resources do not meet the needs of businesses.

Based on the above forecasts of advantages, difficulties and challenges, the Provincial People's Committee has developed 3 economic growth options for 2025. To strive to achieve the highest target of the 5-year plan 2021 - 2025, as a premise for building the goals and tasks of the plan for the period 2026 - 2030, the Provincial People's Committee has chosen the GRDP growth option of the province in 2025 from 8 - 9% as the target and continues to strive at the highest level to achieve double-digit growth, in which, the industry - construction sector increases by 10.5 - 12%; the service sector increases by 8 - 8.5%; the agriculture, forestry and fishery sector increases by 2.5 - 3% and product taxes minus subsidies increase by 3 - 3.5%.

So what activities does our province need to implement to ensure rapid and sustainable economic development?

The tasks and solutions for the province's economy to develop rapidly and sustainably have been approved by the Provincial Party Committee and targets and tasks are regularly supplemented to suit each stage. The important thing is to clearly identify the limitations, weaknesses and causes of each limitation and weakness in order to have solutions to overcome or strengthen.

We must closely follow the Government's direction to develop and adjust the work program to suit the practical conditions of the locality; review the contents and tasks related to the leadership and direction of the Politburo, Secretariat, Government, and Prime Minister to report, evaluate, advise, and propose implementation, avoiding missing work and lax management.

In the coming time, along with the synchronous implementation of mechanisms and policies of the Central and the province, in order to unleash resources, the entire political system of the province needs to join hands, be more determined, and make greater efforts to promote new driving forces to boost production and business, and promote growth. Continue to effectively implement the work of rearranging the organization, apparatus, and administrative units at the commune level; organize and rearrange administrative agencies at the district and provincial levels towards streamlining, compactness, effective and efficient operation and promote administrative reform, especially reform of administrative procedures.

Continue to specify to effectively organize the policy mechanism to support investment in building technical infrastructure for industrial parks in the period of 2022 - 2026, thoroughly solve environmental pollution in industrial parks, programs and plans for in-depth development of industrial parks, improve land use efficiency, improve productivity and product quality by 2030, create favorable conditions for industrial production enterprises of the province to expand consumption markets, export markets, and increase production capacity.

In the long term, our province needs to ensure adequate supply of electricity and water for industrial production activities, strengthen trade promotion activities, stimulate consumption, create conditions and support businesses to implement solutions to boost exports, especially key products with large markets and potential.

We need to take advantage of our location in the Red River Delta, the Capital Region, closely following the approved Provincial Planning to soon complete the transportation system connecting with Hanoi and the provinces in the region, upgrading the infrastructure system. To promote tourism potential, our province needs to implement a plan to promote tourism, international cooperation in tourism, connect tourist spots and areas to expand and create new spaces to serve tourists with unique, high-quality services.

Investment promotion and attraction activities need to be more substantial, focused, and targeted at potential partners, strategic investors, and projects of great significance, large scale, and great impact on socio-economic development. Priority should be given to attracting strategic investors with experience, financial capacity, and transnational corporations with high technology, source technology, "green" technology, environmentally friendly, applying achievements of the 4.0 Industrial Revolution, low greenhouse gas emissions, high added value, and deep and comprehensive participation in the global value chain.

Continue to focus on investing in building Vinh Phuc urban infrastructure, implementing programs, plans, and projects on housing and urban development, especially social housing and housing for industrial park workers. Specify tasks to implement the Provincial Planning. Conduct reviews and adjustments to planning to ensure consistency with the provincial planning and establish construction planning and specialized planning according to regulations.

Regarding the tasks that need to be done immediately in 2025, we must implement more drastic and effective measures to remove bottlenecks to promote compensation, site clearance, and create clean land funds to implement projects. Timely resolve procedures for land allocation, land lease, and land price determination; continue to create clean land funds, creating favorable conditions for businesses to implement investment projects; hand over surplus land funds after project implementation; focus on resolving difficulties and obstacles of long-term projects that are not implemented within the deadline such as social housing, urban areas, industrial parks and industrial clusters.

The whole province needs to promote the disbursement of public investment capital as a driving force to attract resources for economic development; urgently prepare investment for projects expected to arrange the medium-term public investment plan for the period 2026 - 2030 in a focused and key direction. At the same time, we must also focus on implementing the plan to overcome the existing limitations suggested by the Politburo for review; direct the resolution of land encroachment, land occupation, land use purpose conversion, illegal land exploitation; strengthen state management of urban construction and development planning, overcome existing shortcomings and limitations in urban project management, resolutely handle and recover slow-to-implement and ineffective projects.

Vinh Phuc is facing a great opportunity to change and develop strongly, together with the whole country entering a new era, an era of national development. We believe that, under the leadership of the Central Party, the National Assembly, the Government, promoting the fine traditions of the locality, the Party Committee, the government, the people of all ethnic groups of Vinh Phuc province and the business community will overcome all difficulties and challenges, achieving new achievements in the new development period.

Source: https://baovinhphuc.com.vn/tin-tuc/Id/123169/Vuot-qua-kho-khan-thach-thuc-khai-thong-va-huy-dong-cac-nguon-luc-phat-trien-kinh-te---xa-hoi-xay-dung-tinh-Vinh-Phuc-giau-dep-van-minh