Promote agricultural restructuring from width to depth

Prime Minister speaks at the conference.

On 26th December, in Ha Noi, a Conference on reviewing the implementation of the plan in 2016 and the deployment of the plan in 2017 was held by the Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development with the attendance of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

According to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong, 3 impressive points that the Ministry achieved in 2016 are: growth has recovered after 6 months of minus growth (GDP growth in the whole sector reached about 1.2%) in 2016; exports reached the record high of 32.1 billion vnd, increase by 6% compared to 2015; food safety issues have had positive signs, and was highly appreciated by the political system and society.

In 2017, MARD has set targets of 2.5-2.8% growth, about $US 32-32.5 billion of export turnover. The Ministry continues to choose this as the peak year of action on quality management of agricultural materials and food safety of agricultural, forestry, and fishery products.

Speaking at the conference, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said, in 2016, natural disasters have happened more and leaded to our country’s heavy loss of $US 1.7 billion (nearly 1% of GDP). The recent floods in 9 provinces of Central Vietnam and the Highland alone damaged about 4,000 billion vnd.

Agriculture and rural development continue to be the pillar of the economy in every situation, making a great contribution to social security, the Prime Minister also pointed out unsolved problems of agriculture and rural development which need to be handled in the coming time.

There is limited land, and agricultural production remains small. Enterprises in agriculture, and cooperatives are still weak. Science and technology in agriculture are in troubles. Rural labor is too large, labor productivity is low. The status of food safety, agricultural inputs such as fertilizer, pesticides, seeds have many shortcomings, managed ineffectively. Irrigation systems, especially in canals, degrading lakes, are dangerous and waste water, as the Prime Minister says, this is a dangerous bomb hanging over the people.

Speaking about deforestation spreading, the Prime Minister recalls the policy of closing natural forests resolutely and requests to launch continuous attacks on destructive behaviour and to strictly punish violators.

On problems of the vision for agricultural, the Prime Minister said, first of all, the agriculture sector is a strength of our country in the 4th industrial revolution, alongside the strengths of tourism and information technology. This is an advantage as the Prime Minister says, we improve or not based largely on the agricultural sector.

The Vietnam agriculture sector should focus on value rather than volume, without brand. As ¾ of the total area is mountains and highlands and ¼ is land, surrounded by seas, we must develop the agricultural sector more comprehensively, invest much more in forestry and fishery, not just depend on rice.

Vietnam’s agricultural sector must adapt to the impact of climate change happening strongly, strengthen intensive international integration, focus on exports and serving the people. Building smart farming, apply science and technology towards higher value; directly handle the issue of social security.

About the solutions, and missions in the coming period, the Prime Minister states, the first is an urgent need to overcome the consequences of natural disasters, especially in critical infrastructure. The Prime Minister has requested to organize a special winter-spring crop in the disaster areas, localities must do aggressively to secure the late season with bumper harvest. Besides, it must concern about Tet for disaster areas, and not allow people to have a lack of foods.

The Prime Minister emphasizes that we must enhance agricultural restructuring from width to depth, improve the quality and value, not chase the quantity and yield. Localities, after the conference, must plan specifically for implementing aggressively agricultural restructuring, complying with the request of “not restructuring on paper, or half-hearted”.

The Prime Minister has requested to continue to reorganizing production in suitable forms, strongly develop processing technologies, rise value. Take full advantage of international integration. Continue to invest in modernisation of agriculture, rural areas, especially to improve the ability to prevent and cope with natural disasters. Strengthen the new rural reconstruction, ensure the living environment for rural people.

The Prime Minister emphasized that the whole political system must concern itself with agriculture and rural development, the Prime Minister said: “Policies which prevent agriculture and rural development should be removed, particularly those under the control of the Government and the Prime Minister. These policies must be removed as soon as possible, and those under the control of the Ministry of Politics, Central Agency, or the National Assembly must be reported early.

About the recommendations of MARD, the Prime Minister agreed. Accordingly, the Prime Minister has allocated the Ministry of Natural Resource and Environment to collaborate with the MARD and other ministries and branches in research on building to develop the agricultural land use market; research and propose amendments to the Law on Land towards facilitating land concentration, and agricultural production in large scale.

The Prime Minister has assigned the State Bank to research on adjusting and supplementing policies to encourage credit organizations to increase lending limits, modifying regulations on hypothetical assets, allowing enterprises to use the assets like net houses, greenhouses formed during the investment process as hypothetical assets.

The Prime Minister has also agreed to revise policies encouraging enterprises to invest in agriculture and rural development under Decree 210/2013/ND-CP.

About additional funds needed for the agricultural sector in the medium-term public investment plan, the Prime Minister agreed to allocate the Ministry of Planning and Investment and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to study and consider specific issues.