Need a leader for effective regional linkage

	Regional linkages bring real effect
	Vietnam intensifies regional linkages to boost green exports

Mr. Le Duc Thinh, Director of the Department of Economic Cooperation and Rural Development (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development)

How do you evaluate the role of regional linkages in economic development, especially in supporting businesses to join the global value chain?

Regional linkage is a great policy of the Party and State, especially when Vietnam has many advantages in nature and agriculture as well as building a suitable socio-economic development model to form economic regions. On the one hand, regional linkage helps to pool resources; on the other hand, this is coordination for economic agents and economic sectors in the area to effectively exploit resources for production and business. Therefore, the management agencies have given many orientations, priorities and policies to promote regional linkage and perfect the institution of regional linkage for the whole country and for each region.

In fact, in order to develop the market economy and integrate into the world, localities and businesses themselves need to have cooperation and links to promote their full strengths and effectively exploit resources. At this time, the regional linkage will help reorganize the value chain, and reorganize the space so that the economic spaces can be opened up, helping all economic sectors operate effectively. Therefore, localities and many economic organizations and businesses have realized the importance of regional linkages to take advantage of development and integration.

For Vietnamese businesses today, competition in the domestic and international markets is facing many limitations, from product quality, product scale to supply chain management. Vietnamese enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, still have fragmentation in product quality and scale, and limited supply chains, leading to difficulties in output. Therefore, effective regional linkage will solve the fragmentation, not slice the value chain.

In your opinion, what are the difficulties that make regional linkage not effective as expected?

The most difficult problem in regional linkage is the lack of institutions and regulations. Legal documents are usually limited to the central level, then to the local level, and are limited by the administrative level, so the regional linkage is still difficult. Moreover, in many localities, mechanisms and policies are still different, so it is difficult for businesses and organizations to operate.

In addition, the regional linkage in our country currently lacks "leaders" who are organizations and individuals to run. Therefore, the economic linkage in the agricultural sector and the economic sectors; although improved, it is still quite loose, the value chain is inefficient and the collective action is lacking.

What solutions do you need to solve these problems?

The first role to perform regional linkage is in the "creator” that is, the ministries, branches and management industry. Therefore, it is necessary to have a coordination mechanism for regional linkages to jointly exploit resources for local and national economic development. At the same time, it is necessary to have a mechanism for value chains to operate well, not to be banned by one province or another for permission, and need to be coordinated through a consensus mechanism. Regulators need to create a dialogue between localities.

The experience of some countries shows that in terms of administrative management, there are also 4 levels including the central level, provincial level, district level and commune level like our country, but there is one more level, the regional level with the role of coordinator as the regional council to discuss economic goals and governance. The regional council has the right to decide and orient the development of those regions by using both economic and political tools to unify the association issue.

Currently, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has built and launched the agricultural and rural coordination office in the Mekong Delta in 2020 with the role of advising and proposing to the Minister mechanisms, policies, plans, programs and tasks of the nature of regional linkage and sustainable development of the Mekong Delta in response to climate change. Therefore, this model needs to be replicated so that many other economic regions can be diversified and effectively developed.

In addition, in order to achieve regional linkage, the coordination between localities is the most important, it is possible to coordinate first and then gradually amend the law and mechanism because if you wait for the law to be completed, you may miss the opportunity of development association. In order to avoid risks when implementing this method, it is necessary to strengthen information and coordination within the administration, localities look at the needs of businesses, people, and the market...

In particular, for effective regional linkage, businesses need "leading" to build value chains, pulling together economic sectors in the link-up. Therefore, localities implementing regional linkage must create an open business environment for enterprises and cooperatives to operate effectively.

In the context of integration, regions must also make adaptive adjustments, must clearly understand the strengths, potentials and differences of each region, and businesses must also think and transform more strongly in order to cooperate with each other; the link is strengthened and promoted effectively.