At the working session on promoting the role of culture in contributing to economic growth goals on September 17, Politburo Member, Secretary of the Party Central Committee, Head of the Central Propaganda and Training Commission Trinh Van Quyet set out a noteworthy requirement to identify and quantify the contribution of culture to growth.
This requirement is even more meaningful when the Strategy for Development of Vietnam's Cultural Industries sets a target that by 2030, cultural industries will grow by an average of about 10% per year and contribute 7% to GDP.
To assess the contribution of culture to growth, first of all, it is necessary to develop appropriate measurement methods, identifying both direct economic value and spillover effects to other fields.
The strategy for developing Vietnam's cultural industries has identified 10 key cultural industries: cinema; fine arts, photography and exhibition; performing arts; software and entertainment games; advertising; handicrafts; cultural tourism; creative design; television and radio; publishing.
The question is how much those values are contributing to the economy, creating how many jobs, how much added value and how they spread to other industries?
If there are not enough data, determining priority investment sectors and support policies will face many difficulties.
A festival, for example, not only generates direct revenue from activities at the festival but also entails hotel, transportation, food, and shopping services.
A successful film cannot stop at ticket sales but can promote destinations, promote tourism, fashion, music and many other services.
But if there is no unified statistical method, we may miss out on the cultural values created, or conversely, overlap the values that have been in other economic sectors.
Therefore, quantifying the contribution of culture is not simply finding a percentage of GDP.
More importantly, it is necessary to build a data system to know where value is created, by whom, from which sector; how many jobs are created; copyright revenue, intellectual property, export of cultural products or values on digital platforms are growing.
When measured, the new policy has a basis for better resource allocation. Localities can also clearly identify their advantages instead of investing everywhere in the same products.
However, cultural quantification does not mean converting all cultural values into money.
Resolution 80-NQ/TW both sets the goal of developing the cultural industry contributing 7% of GDP, and requires overcoming the trend of only valuing economic benefits but underestimating social and humanitarian benefits.
Because there are heritages that need to be preserved even though they have not generated revenue. There are libraries, museums, traditional art forms or community cultural activities whose greatest value is not on the financial balance sheet.
Quantification, therefore, does not mean that everything related to culture must be turned into money.
Quantifying to see the economic value that we have not fully seen for a long time, to invest more correctly and exploit more effectively.
