[EBOOK] Agriculture and Economic Growth in Vietnam (Conference on Vietnam in 2001: Prospects for Economic and Social Progress), C. Peter Timmer, University of California, San Diego, Sponsored by Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, L’Association des Techniciens Vietnamiens d’Outre-Mer and The Vietnamese Professionals of America

Rapid economic growth is the only sustainable foundation for the elimination of poverty. However, only strategies that include agricultural development can establish strong links between overall growth and reduction in poverty. Most strategies that seek rapid industrialization at the expense of agriculture, even if the intent is to alleviate poverty, actually slow down economic growth and increase levels of poverty. In a country with many impoverished people, policymaker must address both growth and poverty through an integrated development strategy. Rapid reductions in poverty are achieved most effectively when the strategy for economic growth specificaly focuses on raising rural productivity.

The task of restructuring the Vietnamese economy so that it can pursue a market-led growth process creates serious hardship for groups of the population whose skills and jobs do not fit the new challenges. Competitive pressures can cost them their livelihoods, and the state can no longer provide the subsidies to firms and agencies that served in the past as a guarantee of employment and access to a minimum standard of living. In the short run, some mechanisms must be found to alleviate the wont consequences of their poverty. With retraining and rapid economic growth, these vulnerable groups will be able to reenter the work force.

The only road out of poverty, for both the country and these vulnerable groups, is to produce efficiently the goods and services that meet expanding consumer demand whether from rural households, urban wage earners, or foreign markets. Such market-led growth does not automatically eliminate poverty, however, and the development strategy - how the growth process is managed - is the key element in how extensively the poor participate in this process. The primary concern of the poor is for new income earning opportunities, through wage labor or direct production on their farms, in small workshops, and through marketing activities. The distribution of land and other assets is an important element in the potential for a broad-based participation in a dynamic rural economy. Vietnam is comparable to other East Asian countries in this regard. If longstanding disputes over land tenure can be resolved - and the Law of Land passed on July 14, 1993, is an important step in this direction - the country has the opportunity to start its growth process from a base of small farmers who can make long-term investments in both their physical and human capital as a way of improving the welfare of their families.
Human capital is not just the responsibility of private decisions by individual households, however.

Public investments in universal education, in public health clinics, and in nutrition intervention projects for vulnerable populations at the local level can be a major factor in raising the productivity of the poor. Human capital, not physical effort, is the ultimate source of higher incomes. For the poor to escape poverty, and for the country to develop, the government must find a way to fund investment in the public sector that generates new skills, better health, and an improved diet for all, and these investments must reach the poor in rural and urban areas. A dynamic agricultural economy is an essential ingredient in realizing these goals.

[EBOOK] Agriculture and Economic Growth in Vietnam (Conference on Vietnam in 2001: Prospects for Economic and Social Progress), C. Peter Timmer, University of California, San Diego, Sponsored by Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, L’Association des Techniciens Vietnamiens d’Outre-Mer and The Vietnamese Professionals of America

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