Major: Development Economics Code: 9310105

PhD student: Le Huy Doan

Supervisor: ASSOC.DR. . Nguyen Ngoc Son

New academic and theoretical contributions

The dissertation reviews theoretical issues related to the growth quality of the sector; proposes a system of criteria and targets for assessing the growth quality of sectors in general and the industry sector in particular in the context of Vietnam's developing economy, the globalization and te international economic integration.

New findings and proposals drawn from research and survey results of the dissertation

The growth quality of the industry is a concept that " reflects the inner content of the growth process manifested in the means, methods, objectives and effects on the environment holding that growth." The high growth quality of the industry is understood to be the highspeed, efficient and sustainable growth, reflected through the suitability of the internal structure of the industry with the technological level, potentialities and strengths of the industry; the integrated productivity, labor productivity, high value added ratio in product value; be capable of saving energy, producing highly competitive products; continually improve the position of the industrial sub-sectors in the global value chain and be able to protect the environment. The quality of growth of the industry can be assessed according to three groups of criteria: (1) Evaluate the structure of growth; (2) Evaluate the achievement of growth targets and (3) diffusion effects of the industrial growth on the economy. It is possible to assess 11 specific targets.

The growth quality of Vietnamese industry in the period of 2001-2015 is evaluated in three aspects. First, the structure of industrial growth is inappropriate in the width and in the depth; the manifestation is that industries have not used labor as effectively as expected, the value added is not high when they are only involved in the stages having the lowest added value ratio; and the contribution of technology and technical improvements to the growth has been small. Second, industrial growth rate is high, but the growth efficiency is low, presented in the low labor productivity, the low efficiency in use of the investment capital, low and decreasing value-added value ratio in the total output due to the unreasonable industrial structure and the failure to develop the comparative advantages of Vietnam in the industrial production. Finally, contributions of the industry to the overall growth of the economy tends to decrease due to the low production efficiency; have negative impacts on the environment.

There are many reasons for the status of the low growth quality of Vietnamese industry, such as viewpoints about the industrial development, low quality of industrial planning; the resources have not met the demands for the industrial development in the integration period; technological level, equitization process; and the ability to develop supporting industries.

Some suggested solutions to improve the industrial growth quality are: (1) Improving the quality of the industrial development plan; (2) Improving the efficiency in use of the investment capital in the industrial production in all economic sectors; (3) Encouraging the application and renovation of the technology in enterprises; (4) Investment in improving the quality of human resources to better meet the demands for human resource in the industrial development; (5) Strengthening measures to protect the environment ; (6) Encouraging the development of supporting industries to improve the added value ratio in the total industrial output due to the high reliance on sources of expensive raw materials on the world market; Finally, (7) Accelerate the equitization process of state-owned enterprises to improve the performance of this group of enterprises, contributing to create a level playing field and encourage industrial enterprises in all economic sectors to develop together.

Groups of criteria can be used to assess the growth quality of manufacturing industries; the number of criteria can be expanded or narrowed depending on the availability of the data.