At the workshop (Photo: baochinhphu.vn)Hanoi (VNA) – Policymakers, experts and researchers from SoutheastAsian countries, Australia and the Republic of Korea (RoK) gathered at aworkshop in Hanoi on April 26 to discuss the significance of public reform andstate capacity to national development.
The workshop was jointly held by the Institute of State Organisational Sciencesunder Vietnam’s Ministry of Home Affairs (ISOS-MOHA), the Korea ResearchInstitute under the University of New South Wales (KRI & UNSW) andThailand’s Office of the Public Sector Development Commission (OPDC).
It formed part of scientific symposiums toshare experience between Southeast Asian countries, including Cambodia,Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Laos, and the RoKin public reform and measures to enhance state capacity.
Senior advisor of the OPDC Areepan Charoensuk said that the workshop created anopportunity to set up an effective dialogue which helps enhance the supply ofpublic services while ensuring stable and comprehensive growth for regionalcountries in the long term.
Meanwhile, Seung-Ho Kwon, director of the KRI & UNSW, laid stress on publicpolicies, which are billed as motives for national development, adding that thepolicies will serve future reforms.
Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Trieu Van Cuong said that the WorldEconomic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2017-2018 showed that theSoutheast Asian nations made notable improvements in all sectors and Vietnamupped five places to rank 55th in the list.
However, the countries still need more initiatives to improve the public sectoras well as enhance state capacity tocope with instability in the international business environment and domesticchallenges, he noted.
Cuong said that Vietnam’s national programme for public administrative reformhas gained many robust achievements and made contributions to improving statecapacity. The administrative apparatus, nevertheless, faces numerous hurdlessuch as cumbersome administrative system and slow progress in salaryinnovation, he noted.
Another expert from the KRI & UNSW, Mark Turner, held that public reformboosts national competitiveness and help save the state budget and meet expectationsof the public.
The New Public Management (NPM) is an approach to effectively manage publicservice organisations, however, it needs more initiatives to become successfulwhen being applied in the context of the Southeast Asian countries, he added.-VNA
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