The Government needs to make amends for its rather dismal performance todate in facilitating investment in agriculture despite the sector's keyimportance in the nation's growth, experts said at a conference onNovember 9.

The conference brought leading economists and policythink-tanks together to discuss the role of the State in agriculturerestructuring, ways to involve enterprises in the restructuring processand how to make investment structure or the sector more effective.

TranDinh Thien, Director of the Vietnam Institute of Economics, said thatagriculture restructuring needed to follow three main orientations.

Thefirst was development of products utilizing technology, economies ofscale and production zones. The second focus must be on establishing aproduction chain that would render the agriculture sector "safe," hesaid explaining that currently, the input chain was dominated by foreignenterprises and domestic processing enterprises were still limited intheir scope of action.

The third orientation, Thin said, was toensure that enterprises are in the vanguard of rural development andmarket development, ahead of other stakeholders including the State,scientists and farmers.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Tien Phong, aprogramme officer in poverty reduction and social development with theUnited Nations Development Programme, said that investment inagriculture had been decreasing of late, and it was important that moreresources are mobilised for agriculture and farmers.

"Agriculturalproductivity in Vietnam is still low so we need to invest more inresearch, science and technology transfer and encourage domesticenterprises to invest in agriculture," Phong said.

He added thatit was necessary to enhance farmers' capacity so that they can organiseproduction to boost productivity and product quality.

He stressedthe role of the State in making this happen, noting that it was theState that sets standards and regulations, and in a position to instructfarmers on which products had good export potential.

"The Statehas not well performed its role in managing the imbalance ininvestments into agriculture," he said, "It has not played its role wellin setting standards, quality or food safety."

Phong said the State should also support enterprises to invest in agriculture.

"The role of the State in agriculture restructuring needs to be researched more carefully and in more detail," he said.

NguyenThi Lan Huong from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) saidthat to define the role of the State in agriculture restructuring,relevant authorities should review all policies and documents related toquality management.

"In the context of internationalintegration, it is necessary to link small agricultural households tothe global supply chain and promote all advantages of Vietnameseagriculture," she said.

"From that, we can define the role of theState and the State's management to find out which State services needto be extended, which can be prioritised, and which can be conductedunder public-private partnership (PPP)," she said.

Minister forAgriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat stressed that the aim ofagriculture restructuring was not merely to develop a strong sector andproduce more products. Its bigger target was to raise the income andliving standards of farmers.

So the first task is to change theawareness of and attitude towards the market, boost the market to workeffectively in all agricultural areas and to ensure better Stateperformance, he said.

The conference was held by the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development.-VNA