Enterprise in the new economic era of transforming from traditional to digital economy must choose sustainable development of significant breakthrough to reach outstanding level of business scale and effectiveness, a seminar heard in HCM City on Friday.

“Company chiefs and managers should clearly understand the nature of the economy in the technologising era,” Dang Ngoc Minh, editor-in-chief of the Nhip Cau Dau Tu (Investment Bridge) magazine said in his opening speech at Economy 4.0: from Evolution to Revolution.

“From that, better development trends will emerge, enterprise profits will maximise and contribute to national economic strength.”

Tran Dinh Thien, director of the Viet Nam Institute for Economics, said: “The private sector has played a very important role in Viet Nam’s economy, and if the private economy had received attention since the beginning of doi moi 30 years ago, Viet Nam’s economy would have seen remarkable change.”

He quoted statistics for the last 30 years to show the private sector only contributes around 41 per cent of GDP, while State-owned enterprises account for the rest.

“An economy which depends on State-owned enterprises and households cannot be strong and must change.

“The domestic private sector, though still weak, has started to move forward as the national economy is transforming from natural resource exploitation to processing.”

The Vietnamese business environment has become more attractive, he said.

According to the 2017 World Investment Report, after APEC 21 Viet Nam was the Asian leader in attracting foreign investment, and according to a Thornton report in April the country ranked top in Southeast Asia.

Thien said: “Viet Nam has good development trends with active integration through CP-TPP, VN-EU FTA and AEC, a stable economy, good growth potential, increasing foreign investment, and effective administrative reform.

“However, we are restructuring institution very slowly, have too many procedures, weak enterprises, economic growth too dependent on foreign investment.

“The economy has achieved good results but there is no great belief.”

He pointed out that Viet Nam was facing serious problems with regard to land, government spending and equitisation of State-owned enterprises.

“We are stuck on three key issues: infrastructure, human resources and institutions.”

He said the country had need for intensive institutional reforms and should consider the private sector as the spearhead of its economy.

“This is a historic opportunity for Viet Nam to catch up with developed nations by taking advantage of industry 4.0.

“Let us focus on information technology, digital economy, luxury tourism, and high-tech agriculture. We should focus on smart cities and becoming a regional economic hub.”

He said authorities expected a new economic boom in HCM City after the National Assembly passed the special resolution on the city’s finances.

“[But] a resolution is not enough for the city to erase many old challenges and we have a lot of work to do.”

Do Hoai Nam, co-founder of Up Co-working Space said: “Sharing economy has different ways of living and working. The sharing economy will optimise all kinds of resource and appear in all spheres of life.

“The sharing economy will benefit enterprises which know how to take advantage.”

The seminar was the 11^th annual one organised by Nhip Cau Dau Tu and it attracted 500 CEOs.  VNS