Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Wed, 2 Sep 1992 10:47:01 -0400
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      NEWS/VN: VN's PM pledges open policy
X-To:         FISHLM%SNYBUFVA@pucc.princeton.edu, scv@media.mit.edu,
              seasia-l@msu.BITNET, vietnam@cco.caltech.edu, vn-news@saigon.com

09/01

VIETNAM'S PRIME MINISTER PLEDGES OPEN POLICY

    HANOI, Sept 1, Reuter - Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet said on Tuesday Vietnam
would pursue market-oriented reforms and push ahead with the limited
privatisation of state companies, but the state sector must maintain a dominant
role in the economy.
    He said in an Independence Day speech that free-market reforms launched by
the ruling Communist party in the mid-1980s had pulled Vietnam's economy through
the traumatic cut in Soviet-bloc aid and preferential trade, and produced new
growth.
    "Our achievements in many fields in the last few years of renovation have
reaffirmed the correct path of the party, and reaffirmed the revolutionary cause
of the country to develop firmly, with Vietnamese characteristics and
tradition," he said.
    "The reality in all parts of the country has proven we have the skill,
spirit and ability to stand firm and move ahead, to strive to build a socialist
Vietnam that is rich, strong and civilised," he said, marking the September 2
independence day.
    He told some 1,000 Vietnamese, including party leaders, state officials and
military officers, and foreign diplomats gathered in Ba Dinh National Assembly
hall that Vietnam wanted to broaden international economic ties and be friends
with all countries.
    But Kiet said Vietnam was hampered by poverty and by forces supposedly bent
on destabilising the country.
    "The (Vietnamese) task of constructing and defending the country is up
against the activities of forces which try to undermine stability and block the
development of our country," he said, without elaborating.
    Diplomats said that was an apparent reference to the United States, which
imposed a trade embargo on Hanoi in 1964 and extended it to a reunified Vietnam
when the Communists won the war in 1975. Washington, which has refused to
normalise relations with Hanoi, began easing the embargo last year.
    Vietnam, which has slashed subsidies to thousands of loss-making state
companies as part of its economic reforms, must now strengthen the dominant role
of the state sector, while corporatising many government-owned firms, Kiet said.
    The plan launched by the government earlier this year to do that will result
in limited privatisation, local and foreign economists say. But Kiet did not use
the word privatise, which many communists consider ideologically unacceptable.
    "The state economic sector must assume, consolidate and strengthen its
leading role. Step by step we must implement the corporatisation of various
kinds of state enterprises...to bring life to the economy," he said.
    September 2 is the 47th anniversary of the Vietnamese declaration of
independence in 1945 from the occupying Japanese forces and from earlier French
colonial rulers.
    France resumed control over Indochina after the Japanese defeat and Viet
Minh guerrillas then fought until they defeated the French in 1954.
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