8.

In your point of view, should Vietnam focus its

investment more on agriculture or on industry?
Why?
There can be mentioned two economic development scenarios:
industrialization or development based more on agricultural advantage.
Vietnam is currently choosing the first scenario of industrialization development,
with the goal of becoming a modern industrialized country by 2020. However, until
2014, the industry is still growing at a low level.
In the meantime, agriculture has always been the lifeblood of the country when
the economy was in crisis.
Many experts said that without the contribution of agriculture, the socio-
economic situation in Vietnam will be much more difficult in the past few years.
In this context, should Vietnam continue to pursue the path of industrial
development or the second scenario – developing based on agriculture along with
high quality services to improve productivity?
No matter what happens, the number of people working in agriculture will be
reduced, even if there is a best strategy for agriculture. So, Vietnam has very few
options for these two strategies. According to an economics professor, Vietnam needs
to provide highly productive employment opportunities for people relocating from the
agricultural and rural areas.
In particular, it is highly recommended to avoid inefficient policies that encourage to
reduce the number of workers in the field of agriculture only to rapidly increase the
number of people working in the informal sector with low productivity. , such as
retailing and low quality service.
 This is the reason decreasing the productivity and the basic working conditions
of the workers.
 Thus, Vietnam must create high-yielding activity in the industrial or service
sectors, like expanding the field of productivity, which is a popular trend of many
advanced countries.
Overall, it is not enough just to develop agriculture, as labor mobility shift to
areas that are already more productive. On on other hand, Vietnam should pay
attention to the development of a modern agriculture with higher added value,
with less labor force but higher productivity, making good use of the
fairly/highly developed technology achieved from industrialization. On the
other hand, undeniably witnessed by many economists, industrialization has shown
signs of slowing down in Vietnam recently, with the main cause being unrelated to
the internal economy of Vietnam, but because of the world market decline. This is a
global trend. Therefore, synchronizing technology, high quality service and the
advantage of agriculture could be a promising ideas. The result can be a country that
have high quality services in exporting agricultural goods.
Green Growth
- Green growth is a term to describe a path of economic growth that uses
natural resources in a sustainable manner. It is used globally to provide an alternative
concept to typical industrial economic growth.
- Result of green growth could be the Green economy.
- Green economy an economy that aims at reducing environmental risks and
ecological scarcities, and that aims for sustainable development without degrading
the environment.
- A feature distinguishing it from prior economic systems is the direct valuation
of natural capital and ecological services as having economic value and a full cost
accounting system to track back and calculate harmful effect.
What does it aim to achieve?
- Green growth policies are an integral part of the structural reforms needed to
foster strong, more sustainable and inclusive growth. They can unlock new growth
engines by:
- Enhancing productivity by creating incentives for greater efficiency in the use
of natural resources, reducing waste and energy consumption, unlocking
opportunities for innovation and value creation, and allocating resources to the
highest value use.
- Boosting investor confidence through greater predictability in how
governments deal with major environmental issues.
- Opening up new markets by stimulating demand for green goods, services and
technologies.
- Contributing to fiscal consolidation by mobilising revenues through green
taxes and through the elimination of environmentally harmful subsidies. These
measures can also help to generate or free up resources for anti-poverty programmes
in such areas as water supply and sanitation, or other pro-poor investments.
- Reducing risks of negative shocks to growth due to resource bottlenecks, as
well as damaging and potentially irreversible environmental impacts.

Strategies for greener growth need to be tailored to fit specific country

circumstances. They will need to carefully consider how to manage any potential
trade-offs and best exploit the synergies between green growth and poverty
reduction. The latter include, for example:
- Bringing more efficient infrastructure to people (e.g. in energy, water and
transport),
- Tackling poor health associated with environmental degradation and
- Introducing efficient technologies that can reduce costs and increase
productivity, while easing environmental pressure.
 Given the centrality of natural assets in low-income countries, green growth
policies can reduce vulnerability to environmental risks and increase the livelihood
security of the poor.
Green growth strategies also recognize that focusing on GDP as the main measure
of economic progress generally overlooks the contribution of natural assets to wealth,
health and well-being.

Climate Change
Status
- Temperature has increased in almost all regions nationwide, however smaller
areas in Central and Southern coastal regions such as Thua Thien– Hue, Quang Ngai,
and Tien Giang have seen a decrease in temperature. It is worth noting that
precipitation in these areas has increased in both dry and wet seasons.
- Changes in maximum temperature in Vietnam varied in the range from −3 to 3
°C.
- Changes in minimum temperatures mostly varied in the range from −5 to 5 °C.
- Both maximum and minimum temperatures have tended to increase, with
minimum temperatures increasing faster than maximum temperatures, reflecting the
trend of global climate warming.
- In terms of tropical cyclones there are annually on average about 12 tropical
storms on the East Sea.
- There are about seven storms affecting Vietnam annually, five of which hit or
directly
affect the country’s mainland.
- The storm season tends to last longer.
- Overall, storm impacts on the country seem to increase.
- Hot and sunny weather has shown signs of increasing dramatically in various
regions in the country, particularly in the North Central and in southern regions.
- The water level monitored at Vietnam coastal gauges has shown that the
pattern
of changes in annual average sea level is different over the years (starting 1960).
- Almost all the stations have shown an increasing trend.
- Sea level data derived from satellite images from 1993 to 2010 have shown
that the change in sea level in the whole East Sea is 4.7 mm/year, and it has
increased quicker in the east than in the west of the East Sea.
Damage:
- Damage caused by droughts, salinity intrusion in the South Central region, the
Central Highlands and the Mekong Delta by the end of April 2016 was VND 9,020
billion. Droughts and saline intrusion also caused 475,000 households in the area to
lack of running water; 248,000 hectares of rice, 129,000 hectares of industrial crops,
50,000 hectares of fruit trees, 19,000 hectares of crops, 5,000 hectares of damaged
aquatic products. The worst affected provinces are Kien Giang, Ca Mau, Ben Tre and
Bac Lieu.

- In addition, climate change also affects forest resources, causing risks such as
forest fires, natural resource losses, increased greenhouse gas emissions; Impact on
the load capacity, durability and safety of the infrastructure; It seriously affects the
land resources, increasing the erosion, landslide and river bank erosion.

- The report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (10/2015)

stated that in the aftermath of natural disasters (storms, floods and droughts), climate
change could indirectly cause death and disease for the people. In Vietnam, recently,
new diseases have emerged in humans and animals (cholera, avian flu, blue ear),
causing considerable damage.

7. Trends of using resources can you predict in the near future

in Vietnam?
Mainly: Renewable and Clean Energy that are environmental-
friendly.
Vietnam has the potential to develop its available renewable sources. Renewable and
renewable sources of renewable energy include: small hydropower, wind energy,
biomass energy, biogas energy, biofuels, energy from domestic waste, solar power,
and geothermal energy.
Small hydropower is considered to be the most economically feasible form of
renewable energy. Based on the assessment reports, the most recent currently has
over 1,000 places have been identified with potential for small hydro power, 100kW
to 30MW scale from the total capacity put on 7.000MW, positions This is mainly
concentrated in the Northern Mountains, the South Central Coast and the Central
Highlands.
Wind energy: is considered as a potential country for wind power development but
current data on wind power potential of Vietnam has not been fully quantified
because of lack of survey and measurement. Evaluations of wind energy potential are
quite large, ranging from 1,800MW to over 9,000MW, even over 100,000MW.
According to reports, the wind potential of Vietnam is most concentrated in the
Central Coast, South, Central Highlands and islands.
Biomass energy: As an agricultural country, Vietnam has great potential for biomass
energy. The main biomass types are: energy wood, waste - crop residues, livestock
waste, municipal waste and other organic wastes. The ability to sustainably exploit
biomass for energy production in Vietnam is about 150 million tons per year. Some
types of biomass can be exploited even technically to produce electricity or applied
cogeneration energy (producing both electricity and heat) were: Husk in Mekong
Delta, Bagasse surplus excess of sugar mills, domestic waste in big cities, livestock
waste from cattle farms, households and other organic wastes from agro-forestry-
seafood processing.
Solar: Vietnam has the potential for solar energy, which can be exploited for: (i) hot
water, (ii) electricity generation and (iii) cooking ... With a total sunshine hours of up
to 2,500 hours a year, the average annual radiation volume of about 230-250 kcal /
cm2 in the direction of increasing to the south is a good basis for the development of
solar technology.
Geothermal energy: Although geothermal resources have not been investigated and
calculated. However, the latest survey and assessment data show that the geothermal
potential in Vietnam can be exploited to over 300MW. The area that can be effectively
exploited is the Central. At present, the use of renewable energy in Vietnam is mainly
biomass energy in raw form for household cooking. In 2010, consumption reached
nearly 13 million tons of oil. In addition to the use of biomass for heat demand, there
is another amount of renewable energy being exploited for power generation.
According to the latest data up to 2010, the total electricity generated from the forms
of renewable energy supplied to the national grid is nearly 2,000 million kWh,
accounting for about 2% of total electricity output to the grid system.

Attracting Sustainable FDI sources:

CLEAN FDI RECOVERY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF VIETNAMESE
ECONOMIC SITUATION

Complete the policy mechanism on clean FDI management.

- To perfect the legal system on environmental protection. A consistent vertical
management system should be in place to better manage environmental protection
in each facility, inside and outside the industrial park. Apart from concretizing the law
provisions and considering the rationality of some environmental norms, it is
necessary to improve the effectiveness of the Law on Environmental Protection.
Regulators should provide legal information to FDI enterprises, and advise
enterprises on environmental law enforcement.
- Have policies and incentives for clean FDI. Based on some basic criteria to
evaluate a company to implement the best environmental solutions such as:
- Operate with high global environmental standards.
- Actively engage with local partners.
- Transfer of environmentally friendly skills and technologies to partners in the
host country.
- Ensure that the host country receives reasonable benefits in FDI, especially in
the areas of natural resources.
 - The management of FDI as well as environmental management should be
consulted on a list of guidelines developed by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in
order to identify the best environmental practices of the FDI businesses.

Enhance the role of state management and social participation.

In the area of environmentally sustainable FDI, the role of the government is often
expressed in two aspects, namely, policy and arbitration in environmental conflicts
between industry and people to control environmental pollution. schools and
protection of human living conditions.

Promote and encourage the participation of the whole society.

In the investment environment protection. Experience has shown that the role
of communities and civil society organizations is important in harmonizing economic,
social and environmental benefits. According to current trends in the world,
consumers can pressure FDI enterprises to pay more attention to their environmental
performance. The communities where FDI enterprises operate may put pressure on
businesses to improve their environmental performance.

Charges or taxes on businesses that pollute the environment.

In order to develop a sustainable development mechanism, many studies have
suggested the need to integrate environmental costs into the national accounts
system, ie monetary valuations for environmental degradation such as pollution
contaminate and deplete natural resources. In the face of air, water or land pollution,
the government has a number of options for balancing the need for a cleaner
environment with the economic costs of cleaning up the environment. .

Regulation of pollution limits.

In the coming time, it is necessary to implement market-based pollution
control measures by issuing pollution quotas and regulating the amount of waste
discharged into the environment for enterprises. To do this requires Vietnam to have
a team of environmental experts to be able to determine which emissions and how
much volume is allowed to be discharged into the environment. Besides, it is a truly
transparent organization so that there is no negative impact on the issue of quota
trading.

Solutions in the FDI investment process.

In choosing the investment partner. Priority should be given to FDI business
partners from developed countries with high environmental standards, where strict
regulations on environmental work are in place. These enterprises, in addition to
their ability to use clean technologies, often adopt better environmental management
practices, can be closely linked to FDI and host economies, especially through the
transfer of knowledge and clean technology to local subcontractors.
Institutionalization of economic instruments should be institutionalized to encourage
FDI enterprises to be more environmentally friendly, otherwise the enterprise would
not have violated the environmental standards, without trying to find a way.

Reduce total waste and apply effective preventive measures.

In the field of investment licensing, attention should be paid only to projects
that exploit natural resources of high technology, good management and prestige,
minimizing the licensing of projects. There are serious risks of causing serious
environmental pollution to invest in Vietnam such as paper production, steel projects
... which are not suitable with Vietnam's development planning, creating too big
surplus capacity. prospects for exploitation and use. In the investment planning stage,
it is necessary to plan according to the growth of domestic incomes, the development
of FDI to calculate the market capacity for the products, and to make a reasonable
number of projects.

Investment promotion measures.

It is necessary to organize investment promotion conferences for foreign
investors in order to provide information on the investment environment and to
provide opportunities for direct exchanges with investors operating in Vietnam.
investment environment of Vietnam.