The year 2005 is over, and Viet Nam did not reach its well-publicised target of becoming a member of WTO by the end of the year. Are you surprised?

Last year, I affirmed that the goal of becoming member of WTO by late 2005 would be difficult to achieve. The reason was that we just don’t seem to be ready. WTO is a mechanism for opening markets. Countries who meet the demand can become members.

So, I am not surprised. To successfully integrate in the international economy, and especially to join the WTO, we must first recognise that this is an opportunity to develop the nation. Unfortunately, however, many people insist on seeing the negative impacts of integration more than the opportunities that integration would bring.

The Party’s resolution affirms that integration is our objective. This is not an election. However, we just have not been well prepared to meet this objective.

In a little more than ten years, we have joined ASEAN and the Asian Free Trade Area, and we signed the Bilateral Trade Agreement with the US. But, to the world currently, integration means joining the WTO and dealing with WTO rules. We cannot say that we have successfully integrated until we are a member of WTO.

Becoming a member of WTO has been our goal for 10 years. Must we join WTO, at any cost?
Our Gross Domestic Product is US$40 billion, which is about 0.33 per cent of the world’s GDP. Globalisation has resulted in an unequal share to countries. Rich countries receive much, but poor countries receive less.

We are a poor country, so our piece of the pie is small. We still can’t eradicate hunger if we can’t achieve our fair share. Over time, however, this will change. Taiwan and Korea had a smaller share at the beginning, but thanks to saving and development, they have now achieved a larger interest.

In the modern world, you can never expect all of a good thing. We have to give up something to get something, and our success will be small at first before it grows. Unfortunately, we are too afraid of losing, and we don’t always know what it is we are losing. So, we lack confidence and miss many opportunities.

To anticipate our potential losses, we need to seriously research the conditions of recent WTO members. We must ascertain whether their conditions are better than ours.

Some think we are not ready to join the WTO because our enterprises need more time to prepare. What do you think?

I think this is a misunderstanding of the market economy. Enterprises globally and in Viet Nam can develop only in a competitive environment. Without competitiveness, enterprises become weak and become a burden on society.

The market economy organises people and enterprises to be creative and competitive in order to survive. If we keep subsidising our enterprises, they will be weak. The fact is that enterprises in highly competitive markets are stronger.

If we let too much time go by, conditions for integration will become more complicated. China, for instance, is a country with an enormous economy. They had more to lose than our country, but they used the competitive pressure of integration and WTO membership to drive the development of the country.

Only three years after joining WTO, China has signed free trade agreements with many countries because they find that they develop more when they open their markets.

Are we doomed to failure if we do not prepare well for integration?

I see that most of the countries which have open markets and integrate in the international economy are not poor.

As to failure, we must consider who is failing and why. All the world knows that bankruptcies occur in a market economy. Only subsidised economies have no bankruptcies. Even in the US, EU and Japan, everyday there are many enterprises that file for bankruptcy.

As some enterprises fail, others develop more strongly, and the whole process helps the economy grow.

Integration may cause some Vietnamese enterprises to go bankrupt. This is as it should be. On the whole, however, economy will develop. Policymakers should create conditions to develop the whole economy, and they should not create conditions for the benefit of certain enterprises.

Source: Vietnam News, 10/01/2006