Deputy PM: Agriculture essential for national development strategy

Deputy PM: Agriculture essential for national development strategy

Deputy PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc (the second from the right) attends the World Economic Forum(Source: VNA)

Developing agriculture and ensuring food security should play a central role in the national development strategy of any country, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has said.

Speaking at a debate session in the framework of the World Economic Forum (WEF) on East Asia 2015 in Jakarta on April 21 which focused on ways to improve food security in Asia in the future, Deputy PM Phuc stressed that governments around the world need to make strong their commitments to agricultural development.

He stated that Vietnam continually works hard to accelerate its agricultural restructuring in order to build an environmentally friendly sector creating highly competitive products.

The Vietnamese official underlined the need to design appropriate policies to mobilise investment for agriculture and to seek new markets for farm products exports.

According to Deputy PM Phuc, it is necessary to promote cooperation among nations in ensuring food security and agriculture development, as well as in sustainably managing and exploiting water sources, especially in international rivers in the region.

Phuc also briefed participants on Vietnam’s agricultural orientations, saying that agriculture holds a strategic position in the country’s industrialisation and modernisation process and that Vietnam has carried out a number of reforms in the field.

The speaker affirmed that Vietnam backs and proactively implements agricultural initiatives, adding that the signing of free trade agreements with foreign countries will open new markets for Vietnamese farm product exports and create new opportunities for enterprises to invest in the field.

Taking the occasion, the Vietnamese official called on international investors to funnel their capital into agriculture in Vietnam.

In 2014, Vietnam shipped over 6.5 million tonnes of rice and large volumes of another agro-forest-aquacultural products to foreign markets, raking in 31 billion USD.-VNA

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