Searching “core” products for manufacturing industrial branch: Instalment 2 - Policy “lever”
In a discussion about industrial policies held by Central Economic Committee in the end of August, policy formers, international and domestic economic experts gave bitter comments: After more than 30 years of renovation and open-door, the Vietnamese industry was behind the times, it was “at the bottom” as per literal meaning. Strategies, targets had been “drawn out” impractically and were not based on real things, product development policy was so voluntaristic. The value of processing, manufacturing made up 90% of industrial production, but contributed very little to GDP due to importing components and accessories with expenditure of USD 50 billion per year.
Manufacturing export equipment in Lilama 18 JSC
Silent note on manpower song
Former Vice Prime Minister Vu Khoan related that when he came to a business invested by FDI in Vietnam, he found they had a room with adequate machines and equipment for their workers, engineeres to study after work, practise their creative ideas. A group of Vietnamese workers studied and manufactured successfully a stamp pasting machine for products and they were given a reward of 15 million dongs. They were so happy, and their company also “earned big money” from this idea. They designed it more perfectly and deployed stamp pasting machines in their plants all over the world. He said humorously we should follow the motto: “Work smart, not work hard”.
However, not to mention high quality manpower source, the normal one of manufacturing industrial branch is also in serious shortage. According to Dr Duong Dinh Giam (Vietnam Economic Science Association), regarding manpower source, in the total of nearly 54.5 million people under labour age, only 21% of them were trained. In processing, manufacturing industry, the rate of labourers who were trained was just 18%. With such a branch requiring high technique, high technology but rate of trained labourers was so low, how can we talk about “work smart”? Lilama General Director Le Van Tuan let us know Lilama had a training college and yearly they went to far-away lands to enroll students, they were willing to invest and support training expenses and ensure jobs for students after graduation, however they did not achieve their target. Director of a mechanical business complained when he directly interviewed new graduates for recruitment, he started because some of them could not calculate the area of a circle. The insecureness in training resulted in consequence of “cheap employees”, and the labour productivity of Vietnam was rated at “the bottom” of Asian countries.
Ex-President Truong Tan Sang said high quality manpower source was the force directly creating knowledge and creativeness during the process of industrialization & modernization. We should encourage to invest in development of high quality manpower source, taking full advantage of the structure “golden population” for breakthrough, avoiding the danger “notyet being rich but already getting old". We should also paid attention to develop good management cadres, scientific experts, technological specialists and skilled labourers and so on.
When “intelligence” is despised, it won't be able to creat motivation for development process, it is just a silent note on the manpower song.
Policies should be synchronous, consistent
Engineer Dang Van Phuong, Vice General Director of Lilama 69-3 JSC, member of Lilama Corporation showed us the crawler excavator truck “made in Vietnam” LX 2000 and said except the hydraulic parts and control exported from foreign countries, the rest to constitute it had been made by engineers and workers of Lilama 69-3, satisfying quality standards. This was a scientific product with high intelligent content, affirming the ability to manufacture equipment and machineries of the company. However, this truck just “wandered about” the company workshop. Although the company dared invest with depth to manufacture high quality products but the output got "stuck". This is a scientific theme winning national prize and it belongs to the development programme of main important mechanical products. Besides, when being deployed all these products got incentives but the guidances were very vague, even many organs said they did not know this programme and the company was so disappointed. In fact, the products they made were just on display and there were no application. Similarly, fans with high capacity serving cement plants were manufactured successfully by the company, however, only some cement factories placed their orders, the majority still imported this product. General Director of Lilama 69-1 Ngo Quoc Thinh said that a mass of mechanical products with high content of internalization or products “made in Vietnam” such as: transformers, air dryer sets for thermal power plants, high-capacity fans for cement plants … had been made successfully but due to the bidding mechanism, they could not “attend” in investment projects and it was very wasteful. After many years studying, Lilama 69-1 had produced successfully the air dryer set for thermal power plant, satisfying all standards but when it was offered to companies of EVN, most of them refused to purchase it and they still imported this kind of product from outside.
Over tens of years, resources to invest in processing, manufacturing industry have been lower than other economic branches, it was let to develop spontaneously and did not follow any overall plans. There were policies already but they were impractical and unstable. So, ministries and branches should check and choose branch groups, list of products which are really keys to have support mechanism for them, avoiding the spread of tens of branch groups. For new products with long-term use, being able to put into practice and having potential markets, we should study and and give first priorities to them. We should also assign domestic competent enterprises to perform EPC packages and have preferential policies in finance to owers who use main important mechanical products.
In fact, leaders of all levels have notyet evaluated adequately and exactly the importance and silent, enduring contributions of manufacturing industry to the national development. Previously, in Governmental level, there was a Department of Science – Technique (Dept. 10) who was responsible for management, study in science and technique, gathering lots of prestigious scientists; we also had Heavy Industrial Ministry, Mechanic - Metallurgic Ministry to manage the mechanical, manufacturing branches. At the moment, we only have Ministry of Industry and Trade, the manpower source is so little, we can not undertake all duties of the branch.
Vietnamese Government
(Representative of leaders in an FDI mechanical business)
Xuan Thuy - People Newspaper
