Investment in science and technology: it’s time not to “wait” for the budget

The whole scene of the workshop.

Only increase 16.5%/year.

According to Dr. Nguyen Viet Loi, Director of the Institute of Financial Strategy and Policy under the Ministry of Finance, science and technology are gradually playing important role in the socio-economic development, especially in the industrialisation, modernization, and international integration process. Thus, the potential of science and technology is constantly being strengthened, invested from the State budget.

The statistics of the Ministry of Finance show that the spending on science and technology from the State budget has increased by an average of 16.5% per year, about 2% of the total State budget expenditure, contributing to improve quality and increase labour productivity with an average of 4.2% per year.

For the Financial sector, the science and technology activity has contributed to development and improvement of institutions, policies and laws in the financial sector. In particular, in the taxation sector, only in the past 5 years, in addition to the State budget revenue collection, science and technology development has contributed to formulate a plan for tax administration reform for the period 2016-2020; provided the basis for the development and issuance of legal documents on tax policy and management; recommend to supplement and amend to legal documents.

Despite getting many important achievements, according to experts, science and technology has not associated and become a motivation for socio-economic development. One shortcoming is that the Ministry of Planning and Investment pays about 44% in investment development, a part of salary paid by the Ministry of Finance, a part of research paid by the Ministry of Science and Technology. The problem is that in the developed countries, the majority of the cost for science and technology comes from enterprises, the State only spends about 20-30% of the total cost, but it is a contrast in Vietnam.

Must “depend” on enterprises.

Determining science and technology is one of the most important motivations for socio-economic development, Vietnam has set a target to 2020, science and technology in some sectors will reach advanced and modern levels of the ASEAN’s region and the world. To get that, the delegates commented at the workshop that apart from strengthening national capacity in science and technology under the direction of investing in raising the education quality and mobilizing non-state human resources to invest in science and technology; encouraging large enterprises to take the lead in investment for technology development to increase its international competitiveness and export ability.

Besides, according to Dr. Luong Van Khoi, Deputy Director of the National Central for Socio-Economic Information and Forecast under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, an important thing to do is to socialise investment resources for science and technology, attract enterprises' investment, consider it as a financial resource.

The government should issue policies to assist businesses to invest in science and technology, which can establish and operate effectively the credit guarantee, fund for small and medium enterprises, connect domestic enterprises with FDI enterprises to transfer machinery, equipment, technology; establish and put into operation hi-tech parks and technological complexes; encourage large corporations and enterprises to join the supporting industry.

Along with that, the State must consider investment from non-State budget sources, especially from enterprises for science and technology is the main, investment in science and technology must mainly from enterprises. Accordingly, there should be an agency to monitor, synthesise and analyse scientific and technological activities without using state budget to advise the State on breakthrough solutions in attracting investment and development of science and technology.

Moreover, it is necessary to strongly and synchronously reform the management mechanism, especially the financial mechanism; promote the public service reform in science and technology, implement new policy mechanisms and positively impact, remove difficulties in administrative procedures, bring research into reality.

In other countries, science and technology have been strongly developed due to strong investment from enterprises. Investment of Vietnamese enterprises accounted for 41.8%, equivalent to $US 734 million, but it is 74.6% and $US 248.811 million in China, South Korea is 75.7% and $US51.501 million, Thailand Lan is 48.7% and $US1.735 million; respectively.