Hanoi (VNA) - Vietnam will develop the collective economy in thedirection of building product value chains, increasing its contribution todomestic economic development, Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung said at aforum held by the Ministry of Planning and Investment and the VietnamCooperative Union in Hanoi on December 11.

At the same time, ties among co-operatives would be promoted to formassociations or unions, he said.

To develop the collective economy with a core of co-operatives, it is necessaryto consider the collective economy one of the four important economiccomponents in the socialist-oriented market economy, Dung said.

According to the Deputy Prime Minister, in 2010-2020, the collective economicsector, as well as co-operatives, continued development in almost all fields,making important contributions to economic growth. However, the collectiveeconomic sector and co-operatives still have many difficulties and limitationsthat need to be solved.

He said the collective economy and co-operative development had been belowpotential, with slower growth rates than other economic sectors and acontribution to GDP that had not reached expectations.

Mechanism and policies and their implementation by State management agenciesand co-operatives were part for the problem, he said, adding that there was alack of specific guidance for implementing some provisions of laws relating tothe collective economy and co-operatives or the guidance was not feasible.

Speaking at the forum, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Tran QuocPhuong said since the Law on Cooperatives 2012 was issued, a new co-operativemodel had initially gained success in production and business, contributing toperfecting production chains.

In recent years, amid international economic integration and increasing marketcompetition, the global and Vietnamese economies had many uncertainties withlimited budgets, but the co-operative sector had still operated stably, hesaid.

The development of cooperatives contributed to the development of thecollective economic sector and also increased the income of each individual ofthose co-operatives.

Trang Thi Xuan, Vice Chairwoman of the Son La People's Committee, said despitethe domestic economy facing many difficulties in recent years, the co-operativesector in Son La enjoyed stable production.

In 2019, co-operatives producing fruits exported 20,795 tonnes of fruit tomajor markets including EU, US and Australia. Meanwhile, co-operativesproducing organic agricultural products had created many jobs and increasedincome for local people, she said.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Tu Anh, director of the General Economic Department under theCentral Economic Committee, said co-operatives had a very important role indomestic economic development, especially amid climate change, naturaldisasters and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Anh said Vietnam needed policies to adapt to climate change for co-operativesin agriculture, forestry, tourism, industry and construction. It also needed toimprove co-operatives’ management ability.

Also at the forum, many agricultural experts said global trade had seendramatic changes and trade wars between major powers had been unexpecteddevelopments. In addition, trade protectionism and the COVID-19 pandemic werecreating negative impacts on all economies.

However, they said domestic co-operatives needed to work together and withenterprises in other sectors to improve production efficiency and income,approach modern production technology, and expand export markets./.