During Defense the war, the place that decides the country’s fate is the Ministry. In peaceful economic development, the place that decides the country’s wealth and poverty, the people’s hunger, and the development or stagnation of the economy is the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade is the headquarters and advisory agency that determines the success or failure of the industrialization process. It requires the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade – commander of the industrialization campaign – to be a strategic leader, must be a technocrat with business management knowledge of the industrial era, tested in the economic life of the country.
But unfortunately for the country and the Vietnamese people, the leader of the Ministry of Industry and Trade during the country’s industrialization was simply a worker and farmer politician. Provincial Party secretaries and Party princes of Communist lineage have caused industrialization projects to fail and collapse, leaving only crimes and scandals in history.
Secretary of the Lang Son Provincial Party Committee Vu Huy Hoang became Minister of Industry and Trade for 10 years, from 2007 to 2016, and was the investor of 5 industrial projects, with a capital of VND30 trillion, all of which suffered heavy losses, all of which were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
Losing a large amount of investment capital for industrial projects, hindering the cause of industrialization, in 2021, Minister of Industry and Trade Vu Huy Hoang received an 11-year prison sentence.
From 2016 to 2021 Party crown prince Tran Tuan Anh, son of former Politburo member and former State President Tran Duc Luong held the position. After 5 years as Minister of Industry and Trade, he was both incompetent in his role as commander of the industrialization campaign and scandalous in his family life, but because he was the crown prince of the Party, Chairman of the Central Inspection Commission Tran Cam Tu, while chairing the full agency’s conference, from September 28 to 30, 2021, had to cautiously conclude:
“Minister of Industry and Trade for the 2016–2021 term Tran Tuan Anh has been irresponsible in leading and directing inspection and examination, allowing many violations and shortcomings in advising and implementing additional planning and management of electric energy development, especially solar power, wind power, and small and medium hydropower projects; in building mechanisms and policies on electricity prices and gasoline prices.” (Tran Tuan Anh – Vietnamese Wikipedia)
If we consider the country’s industry as a living organism, then electricity is the blood that nourishes that body. With unworthy Ministers of Industry and Trade, not qualified enough to meet the requirements of the industrialization cause, they have turned Vietnam’s electricity industry into a waste warehouse, piling up outdated Chinese coal power technology lines which is both economically inefficient and releases waste that poisons the environment. This is a technology that has been eliminated by the world for a long time.
After 20 years of industrialization, the country still cannot proactively source electricity. There is still a shortage of electricity first and a shortage later. America’s Intel Corporation has invested $1.5 billion in Vietnam to build an electronics and chip manufacturing factory. They also announced plans to invest an additional $1 billion to expand production. But recently, Intel stopped planning to expand production in Vietnam. The reason given is instability for production due to inadequate and unstable power supply, fatigue due to cumbersome, complicated, and stagnant administrative procedures of the government administration in Vietnam, and above all due to the inconsistency of the Vietnamese legal system.
Stopping production expansion plans in Vietnam, Intel immediately transferred $4.6 billion to invest in building a chip factory in Poland!
Lack of electricity, having to scramble to find the power source. Buy electricity from China and Laos. Like a poor family carrying baskets and measuring each meal of rice.
Industrialization is the career of those who know how to care, are sensitive, and have foresight. A family that settles down all year round with a lifestyle of eating every meal, with a fragmented mindset, cannot get rich.
In terms of electricity, that’s the case, but gasoline sources have also faced shortages many times. Stockpiles do not guarantee supply if instability occurs.
For many years, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has failed to ensure energy for the economy, causing huge losses to the country’s economy that cannot be measured. It can be said that the Ministry of Industry and Trade is no different from a lame horse holding the responsibility of pulling the rickety carriage that is the Vietnamese economy.
Thoibao.de (Translated)
