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Could you please tell us the current situation of labor productivity in Vietnamese enterprises? What are the reasons of low labor productivity?

First of all, we must affirm that Vietnam is currently one of the countries having the lowest labor productivity in ASEAN. In the past few years, although we have made efforts to improve productivity, but the productivity gap between Vietnam and ASEAN countries is gradually widening, thus it is very difficult for us to catch up with the strongest economies in ASEAN.

Currently most of our workers are still working in the fields of agriculture, forestry and fisheries. In every economy, labor productivity in these sectors is always very low. Therefore, we need to promote by shifting labor from agriculture to the service industry through strong development of the business community in the coming time. At the same time, we are taking measures to help enterprises by improving the technology and increasing investment, catching up with technology 4.0 to improve productivity within the industry. These are very important solutions and if they want to achieve such orientations to improve labor productivity, they must continue to drastically reform institutions.

I think one of the very important directions is to formalize the individual business area and promote them into businesses. In addition, strengthening research and development, improving the quality of human resources by equipping the latest tools in manufacturing enterprises is also an important measure.

According to you, what difficulties are we facing when shifting the labor structure from agriculture to industry?

There are two reasons that is delaying the shift of labor from agriculture to the service industry. First of all, it is a market problem, this will depend greatly on the competitiveness of enterprises in the industrial sector. If we can expand the market we will be able to attract more workers to this area.

Secondly, it is the policy regime for enterprise development. We have been trying for a very long time to ease and untie the restrictions affecting business, facilitating the establishment of new businesses and the development of existing businesses. But administrative procedures, business conditions, specialized inspection procedures and inspection work are still barriers for the development of enterprises. In order to develop the service industry, the subject of this area is enterprises. Therefore, promoting business development, aiming to achieve the business development objectives set by a Resolution of the Party and Government, we can accomplish the task of shifting labor from the agricultural sector to service industry area that will enable improvement of the economy’s labor productivity.

Vietnam is one of the economies with many free trade agreements, so our market is on a global level, and this is also an opportunity for businesses to open their markets. Of course, it is accompanied by fierce competition. Businesses can only compete successfully in an open market if businesses improve their competitiveness by improving their labor productivity.

Can you tell us more about the responsibilities of businesses in improving productivity in the future?

In the new context of the open market economy, especially with the very strong impact of Technology Revolution 4.0, this requires businesses to reach international standards and apply modern technology to increase competitiveness. When businesses improve their competitiveness they can attract more workers, creating more jobs in the service industry. That is a way businesses contribute to improving labor productivity.

I think that the small and medium business sector are the main motivators for growth, the backbone of the economy, so upgrading the micro and even small and medium-sized business sectors to reach international standards is the foundational condition to improve productivity.

In every economy, the productivity of small and medium-sized enterprises is always lower than that of large enterprises, because the capital investment of smaller enterprises is much more limited. These smaller enterprises find it difficult to access leading technologies and participate in the chain of production to attain high labor productivity. But the small and medium business sector is a very important area because it can handle the largest labor force in the economy, so development and productivity improvement of small and medium-sized enterprises in the region will play a very important role in improving national labor productivity.

Therefore, it is necessary to abandon the concept that only large enterprises can afford to reach international standards, because now, even small and medium-sized enterprises have the conditions to reach full global standards. Not only big enterprises can join the global market, also micro and even small businesses and enterprises can reach out to the world markets with the help of e-commerce.

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Participating in e-commerce, connecting to the global market, connecting with international standards will be basic orientation strategies for Vietnamese enterprises for improving labor productivity. Of course, the international standards that I speak of here are not only standards of technology and management, but also social responsibility, business culture.

It is necessary to improve labor productivity in leading enterprises, but on the other hand, there must be strong and widespread measures to improve labor productivity in small and medium-sized enterprises in the economy. Raising the productivity of labor to improve competitiveness must become a daily awareness for each small and micro enterprise and every employee.

Thank you Sir!