Two revolutionary transformations
Speaking at the forum “Creating a new economy: Revolution in digital transformation - green transformation and the pioneering role of enterprises” held on October 16, Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Hong Son - Deputy Head of the Central Economic Commission - said that the new economy that our country wants to create is first of all a high-income economy with a socialist orientation.
This is a people-centered economy that leaves no one behind, ensuring the goal of “rich people, strong country, democracy, fairness, and civilization”; an economy with a modern structure and a new growth model, based mainly on the efficiency of resources, science, technology, and innovation; a digital, green, and circular economy, and an independent, self-reliant economy associated with deep and broad international integration.
“To build this new economy, we are carrying out two major transformations. One is the transformation to a socialist-oriented market economy associated with international integration. The other is digital transformation associated with green transformation (or what we often call dual transformation). The special thing is that both of these transformations are revolutionary in nature,” Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Hong Son emphasized.
Emphasizing that both of these transitions are unprecedented, there are still many things ahead that need to be further researched, done and perfected, so Mr. Son believes that the first requirement of both of these transitions is innovation in thinking, changing the way of thinking, the way of doing, daring to think, daring to do.
Next is innovation in institutions, mechanisms, policies; in management, governance and operation at both the macro (government) and micro (enterprise) levels, in which people and enterprises are the center, the state plays a creative role and under the leadership of the Party.
Next is the change in infrastructure, suitable human resources and the requirement for coordination and cooperation not only nationally but also regionally and globally.
Businesses are still not investing and benefiting much from dual conversion
Faced with new trends associated with the 4.0 Industrial Revolution, digital transformation and green transformation, Vietnam has made many efforts, especially in terms of issuing policies for digital transformation and green transformation. The thinking and policy solutions for digital transformation, digital government, digital economy and digital society have been soon developed and concretized.
However, according to Dr. Tran Thi Hong Minh, Director of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), it must be frankly acknowledged that the business community does not understand much, has not invested much, has not implemented much, and has not benefited much from the digital transformation and green transformation process.
For policy-making agencies, this is a worrying reality, not only in terms of the quality of documents but also in terms of the lack of practices at the enterprise level to develop more specific, “close-to-home” policies. For example, without information and coordination from enterprises, officials and civil servants will never be able to research and specify their own standards for circular economy projects in a specific field.
Even though CIEM has a lot of experience in using quantitative models to assess the impact of policies, it still faces many difficulties in “quantifying” the impact of policy proposals for the circular economy, especially for businesses. Lack of information and sharing of lessons learned from successes and failures of previous businesses will also cause businesses to have to explore, spend money, and even hesitate to invest in transformation.
"Digital transformation and green transformation need to be viewed as a process, in which the prerequisite is to have a healthy, substantive and strong partnership between policy-making agencies, the business community and research institutes," said Dr. Tran Thi Hong Minh.