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| Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Pham Khoi Nguyen |
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How to raise the efficiency of the natural resources and environment sector?
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Vietnam is establishing and developing a market economy gearing towards a socialistic direction. The country is making gigantic efforts to develop in a sustainable manner and shorten the gap in development with other countries worldwide. The process requires radical changes in the management policies and mechanisms, and the method of governing the whole economy and each economic sector, including that of the natural resources and environment sector.
The management of natural resources and environment is grappled with a number of problems as the current management mechanism remains ineffective, economic tools are not yet applied widely, and the sectors contributions to the state budget remain quite minimal.
To right the situation, facilitate the natural resources and environment sector development, improve its status in the national economy, and raise its contributions to the state budget and socioeconomic development, the Civil Affairs Committee under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has enacted a resolution to spur the natural resources and environment sector development. In the resolution, the ministry highlights the importance to reform management mechanisms and policies, making them compatible to the market economys development requirements and raise the sector’s capacity for economic analysis. The changes need to follow a suitable schedule that underpins the national sustainable economic development.
It must be noted that natural resources become increasingly depleted, so that environmental protection must be considered a vehicle to measure the efficiency and durability of economic activities to ensure sustainable development.
To make bigger contributions to the economy, what contents does the natural resources and environment sector need to focus on and whats are the measures?
First and foremost, the policies and mechanisms on natural resources and environmental management must be changed to conform to the market economy requirements. Specialized policies and mechanisms will be made clearer and more transparent to raise enforcement efficiency. Priority will be given to establishing viable income-raising mechanisms for investment development and correcting problematic mechanisms and policies especially in the field of land, geology and minerals, survey and mapping, hydrology and meteorology, making them compatible to the new development requirements.
The ministry is holding auctions of land use rights and land projects and will soon hold auctions of the right for mineral exploration and mining sites on a trial basis. In the long term, efforts will be made to establish suitable natural resources and environment valuation mechanisms, in the meantime formulate national accounts for the countrys different natural resources. The ministry is compiling guiding decrees for valuation of land, minerals, natural resources and environment, making them conform to the market economy rules. We follow a principle under which the users and beneficiaries of natural resources and environment as well as the violators causing depletion of natural resources are all required to pay. In the meantime, efforts will be made to gradually commercialize information and database on natural resources and environment through establishing and implementing projects on the commercialization of information and data in diverse fields of hydrology and meteorological, geology and minerals, survey and mapping, and land. This is a major content in the states plan to spur the sectors development.
Nowadays there are more and more investment projects in hydro-power, transport and construction fields using information and data on geology, hydrology, environment and survey etc. In this situation, I believe that commercializing information and data procured by the State is a necessity that conform to the market economys development requirements. Going into this direction will help the natural resources and environment sector raise incomes and make bigger contributions to the state budget.
Besides, it is important to enhance the sectors analysis capacity through improving staffs qualification and bringing into use economic analysis models in the natural resources and environment field. Including economists among the sectors management, fostering cooperation with the centers for economic research and analysis both at home and abroad in the making of management policies are also urgently needed. The expense-interest analysis model in state management of natural resources and environment must also be established.
What implications does the sector have on future national socioeconomic development?
If diverse development projects in the natural resources and environment sector are effectively handled, I leave that within the next decade Vietnam will have a well-functioning general economic and technical branch that perfectly meets the market economy’s vigorous development requirements. The sector could then make bigger contributions to the state budget as well as to socioeconomic development, enabling Vietnam to achieve industrialization and modernization targets and become an industrialized nation by 2020.
.VEN