Workers process fish for export at the Hùng Cá Co Ltd in the southern province of Đồng Tháp. — VNA/VNS Photo Nhựt An

Nguyễn Bích Lâm, economic expert, former general director of the General Statistics Office (GSO), speaks to the Vietnam News Agency about opportunities and advantages of the 100 million people population.

According to the GSO, Việt Nam hit the 100 million people mark in April this year, what are the advantages to the economy by reaching this historical milestone?

The event that Việt Nam welcomed its 100 millionth citizen was an important milestone, creating a historical mark in the cause of national construction, development and defence. With a population of 100 million, Việt Nam ranks among the 15 most populous countries in the world, the 8th in Asia and the 3rd in Southeast Asia.

Việt Nam has many opportunities for rapid and sustainable development in the period of the "golden population" with an abundant young labour force, of which people with high spending demand and willingness to spend account for a high proportion. It is a potential consumer market.

With the increasingly open business environment, extensive international integration bringing many advantages to Vietnamese goods and with an abundant young workforce, it is an opportunity to attract foreign investment, bring our country to participate deeply in the global supply chain and elevate Việt Nam's position on the world economic map.

Vietnamese people are smart, sensitive, easy to grasp new things, industrious and creative. This is an advantage for workers to grasp science and technology, improve their qualifications and skills, is one of the motivations to improve labour productivity.

Is the current labour market suitable for the population size and the requirements of the economy?

At present, the Vietnamese labour market has some worrying limitations. Both the supply side and the demand side have not met a modern, flexible, sustainable and integrated labour market.

Labour structure is not reasonable as labourers working in the agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors account for 27.5 per cent of the total. Labour quality does not meet demand. Seasonal labour is developed while skill training is limited.

The labour market is facing a serious shortage of highly qualified technical workers, especially in some service industries such as banking, finance, telecommunications and tourism.

The rate of trained workers is still low so the competitiveness is low. Employees have not been equipped with knowledge and skills to work in groups.

Over the past decade, the Party and Government paid attention to training qualifications and skills for the workforce. The percentage of trained workers with degrees and certificates has continuously increased over the years.

In 2010, the proportion of trained workers was only 14.7 per cent of the total labour force. By 2020 this rate increased to 24.1 per cent and by the first quarter of this year it was 26.4 per cent. However, by the first quarter of this year, out of 52.2 million people in the labour force, about 38.1 million were untrained workers.

This is a great challenge to the goal of building a powerful Việt Nam. The Government should urgently develop and implement training programmes to improve the professional and technical qualifications of the workforce.

What solutions are needed to take advantage of this period's opportunities for development?

The golden population period is a rare opportunity for countries to take off economically. According to demographers, the golden population usually lasts from 30-35 years, even 40-50 years.

For Việt Nam, population ageing is taking place rapidly, the golden population period only lasted for about 30 years. Therefore, Việt Nam needs to take the opportunity to develop because it will not return, or at least 100-200 years later.

To take advantage of this opportunity, the Government needs to have appropriate and breakthrough policies and solutions to overcome the inadequacies of the labour force, improve human resources quality to meet the needs of the labour market.

It needs to increase productivity, create jobs for the young workforce, ensure social security for the elderly and vulnerable people, and ensure gender equality.

Along with that, it is necessary to innovate views, methods and be flexible in training the workforce according to the change of the world. We should train workers not only with skills but also with various skills, from foreign languages to other skills to meet the requirements of integration, ensuring competitiveness.

The Government needs to improve the flexible, integrated and sustainable labour market to meet the enterprises’ needs and the trend of labour transformation, global and regional supply chains.

In addition, the Government should urgently develop a positive labour market policy, actively implement training, retraining, and adaptive training for the working workforce.

At the same time, it should implement lifelong learning, flexible learning to improve workers’ qualifications and skills.

The Government needs to innovate management, comprehensively renew the recruitment policies, evaluation, use and promotion of state workers.

People in all fields, in all aspects and at all times are always the decisive factor, ensuring the success of all development goals of the country. When the Government successfully implements policies and solutions to improve the population and human resources quality, Việt Nam will successfully take advantage of this opportunity of the golden population period with a scale of 100 million people. — VNS