The second Vietnam Private Sector Forum (VPSF) chaired by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc was held on July 31st at Melia Hotel, Hanoi. The Forum welcomed nearly 1,000 delegates representing the government, ministries, departments, leaders of cities and provinces, international, organizations, business associations as well as economic experts and numerous CEOs from Vietnamese and foreign enterprises.
Under the theme “From the Party Central Committee’s Resolution 5 to the Action Programme of Private Sector in Vietnam” the session focused on discussion and dialogues between government and the private sectors in the key national spheres of agriculture, tourism and the digital economy.
The tourism sector targets annual revenue of USD 35 billion and a 10 percent share of GDP by 2020, according to an assessment of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. However, there are still many barriers to the development of tourism businesses in Vietnam.
Mr. Tran Trong Kien , Chairman of Thien Minh Group, said many scores of Vietnam’s tourism are ranked bottom in the Global Comptetitive Index (GCI) of World Economic Forum 2017. Therefore, there should be the fundamental, synchronous and stable solutions to achieve the target of turning Vietnam into a tourism country in the near future. Particularly, the Tourism Group of VPSF proposed 03 main tourism barriers that need to broken down: marketing and promotion, visa exemption and environment.
Additionally, Kien stressed the country has showned little efforts in promoting tourism with a budget of only 2 million US dollars per year which is considered to be the lowest in ASEAN region (2,9% of Thailand, 2,5% of Singpore and 1,9% of Malaysia). Moreover, Vietnam has not had any overseas representative or national tourism promotion agency in the last years.
Source: CAFEF
