Day: October 7, 2022

Ramla Al Khalidi, newly-appointed UNDP Resident Representative in Vietnam, has pledged to further support Vietnam’s development, covering climate change response and the settlement of bomb and mine consequences.

 

At a meeting with Ambassador Dang Hoang Giang, Permanent Representative of Vietnam to the UN, in New York on October 6, Khalidi highlighted Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh’s remarks at the informal Leaders’ Roundtable on Climate Change in New York, co-chaired by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Egyptian President on September 22.

 

Through the speech, the PM sent out Vietnam’s strong message of climate change to international partners, she continued.

 

The official expressed her hope that Vietnam will consider adjusting Decree 114/2021/ND-CP on the management and use of official development assistance (ODA) and foreign preferential loans in order to meet requirements of international organisations and development partners during the implementation of development support projects in Vietnam. Giang, for his part, said he hopes that the UNDP will continue to support Vietnam in fulfilling sustainable development goals, share its experience, and provide consultancy for the country in policy making.

 

He also called for UNDP’s assistance to Vietnam in the country’s efforts to achieve targets set at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 26) that took place in the UK last year, and in the negotiations to set up a partnership in energy transition with G7 countries.

 

The ambassador suggested the two sides closely coordinate in celebrating the 45th anniversary of the Vietnam-UN relationship in late October./.

 

Source: Vietnam News Agency

 

Permanent Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh has affirmed that Vietnam is keen on promoting partnership among localities of Vietnam and Japan, considering it as a substantial and effective cooperation channel for both sides to beef up bilateral ties in various fields.

 

In a reception for Vice Governor of Japan’s Wakayama Prefecture Shimo Hiroshi in Hanoi on October 6, the official highlighted that the Vietnam-Japan extensive strategic partnership is in prime time with high political trust despite impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and underlined that Japan has been a leading important economic partner of Vietnam.

 

Bilateral economic, trade, investment, labour and education-training has been fruitful, he noted.

 

The Deputy PM said that partnership between localities of the two countries has been deepened.

 

He said he hopes Wakayama will continue to effectively implement signed agreements with Vietnam, establish partnership with more Vietnamese localities, encourage local businesses to invest more in Vietnam, strengthen cooperation in personnel training, and expand the reception of Vietnamese practitioners and labourers to work in the prefecture.

 

For his part, the Japanese official said the prefecture is implementing an agricultural and fisheries cooperation agreement with the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, and a deal in in the field of industry with the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

 

The locality has also strengthened people-to-people exchange with Vietnam, including a “lotus” exchange programme between Kinokawa city and Quang Nam province, which was initiated by the Chairman of the Japan – Vietnam Parliamentary Friendship Alliance Nikai Toshihiro, aiming to make lotus a symbol of spiritual connections between Vietnamese and Japanese people, he said.

 

He added that Wakayama is hastening the formation of a Japan-Vietnam Friendship Association in the locality and he will be the first leader of the association./.

 

Source: Vietnam News Agency

 

There is a serious shortage of data on specific groups of Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) in Vietnam, especially those who are most marginalised, including persons with hearing and learning difficulties.

 

As Vietnam is set to conduct its second national survey on people with disabilities, it is important to collect data on the full spectrum of people with disabilities in Vietnam, so as to develop appropriate actions and policies.

 

Representatives of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Vietnam, Vietnam Federation on Disability and the General Statistics Office (GSO) held a consultation workshop regarding the issue on October 6.

 

Speaking at the workshop, Patrick Haverman, Deputy Resident Representative of UNDP in Vietnam, said that according to the latest UN analysis, out of the 158 sustainable development indicators of Vietnam (VSDGs), only eight require data regarding those with disabilities.

 

Among these eight indicators, only two (the number of beneficiaries of monthly social allowance in the community, and number of people living and being cared for in social protection facilities or social housing) are collected by both the General Statistics Office and the National Council on Disability (NCD) through statistical surveys and reporting.

 

Data of half of the eight indicators to assess the level of disability inclusion in different areas of VSDG are not collected by NCD, such as the proportion of the population satisfied with their most recent experience of public services.

 

”It is difficult to find disability data; and when found, it is unclear which source should be cited due to the inconsistency of data reported by different Government agencies,” he said.

 

“It is important to make PwDs more visible in our national database and to have more indicators disaggregated by disabilities in VSDGs, which helps us better understand PWDs’ vulnerability and needs,” he said.

 

“UNDP is supporting the development of a set of output indicators for the National Survey on Persons with Disabilities in 2023 to be comprehensive and align with international standards,” Haverman said.

 

Dang Van Thanh, vice president of Vietnam Federation on Disability, said there were about 6.2 million people with disabilities in Vietnam including more than 700,000 children.

 

He said that the number of people with disabilities in Vietnam released by different agencies was different from each other.

 

This crucial information was a foundation to design and develop activities and policies, for example, social welfare, education or healthcare, he said.

 

“The more exact the input information is, the better the outputs are,” he said.

 

Deputy head of the GSO Le Trung Hieu said that Vietnam was preparing for the second national survey on people with disabilities next year.

 

The first National Survey on PwDs was done in 2016, using an internationally standardised toolkit for measuring disability. That survey was part of the National Statistical Survey Programme.

 

“Through that survey, for the first time, we had an overview of the disability rate in the general population nationwide, types and degrees of disability, as well as PWDs’ living conditions and the level of PWDs’ integration in a number of areas such as healthcare, social protection, education, employment, and a comparison of disability rates between socio-economic regions,” said Hieu.

 

Until now, there have been many reports by State agencies, organisations and for persons with disabilities, and disability experts still using data published in this survey.

 

After six years, the 2016 National Survey on Persons with Disabilities (VDS 2016) no longer accurately reflects the current situation of PWDs in Vietnam, Hieu said.

 

“The data needs to be updated and supplemented to better support the monitoring of disability-inclusive socio-economic development programmes and policies, and to better meet the law and policy-making requirements in line with international commitments, particularly the upcoming amendment of the Law on Persons with Disabilities, the monitoring of the implementation of disability-mainstreaming laws, policies, and the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD),” he said.

 

The GSO has proposed a set of 53 indicators to be disaggregated by disabilities, covering ten Sustainable Development Goals. The indicators can be used not only for the survey next year, but also serve the disability data disaggregation in other national statistical surveys, contributing evidence to the development of disability-inclusive socio-economic policies and programmes.

 

Nguyen Dinh Trung, a GSO official, said that in Vietnam, according to the national population census 2009, people with disabilities made up 7.98% of the country’s population aged from five.

 

According to VDS 2016, people with disabilities made up 7.06% of the country’s population aged from two years old. It is estimated that now, there are about seven million people with disabilities in Vietnam.

 

“Data about people with disabilities in Vietnam still fails to meet increasing demands of data users, especially in policy making, monitoring and assessing the implementation of relevant laws as well as the implementations of international commitments that Vietnam has made,” Trung said,

 

He said that GSO was developing plans to conduct the second national survey on people with disabilities in September and October next year, collecting responses of 75,000 households nationwide.

 

In addition, questionairs would also be offered to social sponsor centres which take care and offer services for people with disabilities. The survey will also collect information from commune/ward people’s committees, ministries, agencies, schools and grassroot healthcare centres.

 

Vu Thi Kim Hoa, deputy director general of Child Affair Department under the Ministry of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs, suggested that it was necessary to collect information about children with disabilities, which would help to better ensure child rights and address child-related issues./.

 

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Vietnam is placed 48th among 132 economies in the Global Innovation Index 2022.

 

The country also ranks 2nd out of 36 economies in the lower middle-income group, with a performance above expectation for the level of development.

 

Vietnam continues to score above the lower middle-income group average in all innovation pillars, and even achieves the same result when compared to the average of the upper-middle-income group, apart from human capital and research.

 

It ranks first worldwide in high-tech imports.

 

Region-wise, Vietnam is placed 10th among the 17 economies in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Oceania.

 

It is also included in the middle-income economies with the fastest innovation catch-up to date.

 

Vietnam is among the record-holders for outperforming in innovation for the 12th year in a row, alongside India, Kenya, and the Republic of Moldova.

 

Specifically, the Southeast Asian country performed best in creative outputs and weakest in human capital and research.

 

However, a slight fallback is witnessed, which emphasised the importance of sustaining innovation efforts over time.

 

Previously, Vietnam ranked 44th in 2021 and 42nd in 2020.

 

This year, the first place continues to belong to Switzerland, followed by the US in second and Sweden in third.

 

Published by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a specialised agency under the United Nations, the GII tracks the current state of innovation globally and ranks the innovative performance of 132 countries.

 

The 2022 focus is on the future of innovation-driven growth, analysing global innovation trends against the background of an ongoing pandemic, a slowing of productivity growth and other evolving challenges.

 

Two innovation waves in particular are identified as having the greatest potential to improve productivity and change lives for the better – the Digital Age and Deep Science.

 

Responses from WIPO member states last year revealed that more than 75 countries use the GII either to improve their innovation ecosystem, strengthen innovation metrics, or as a specific reference in economic policymaking./.

 

Source: Vietnam News Agency

 

 

Potential for cooperation between Vietnam and Germany remains huge with new opportunities, as Germany is currently an economic locomotive of the European Union (EU), and also Vietnam’s largest trading partner in the region, according to Ambassador Vu Quang Minh.

 

Since the two countries set up their strategic partnership in 2011, two-way trade doubled to 11.2 billion USD in 2021. The figure hit 6.2 billion USD in the first half of this year, up 15% year-on-year.

 

As of May 31, Germany had 426 valid investment projects worth 2.31 billion USD in Vietnam, while the Southeast Asian nation ran 36 projects totaling 283.3 million USD in the European country.

 

In the context the two countries and the whole world are quickly recovering post COVID-19, bilateral trade and investment are forecast to grow further in the coming time, stated Minh.

 

In addition, Vietnam is seen as a reliable partner and a leading attractive market of German businesses and investors, he said, adding that many delegations of German firms are scheduled to make fact-finding tours to the Vietnamese market from now to the end of this year.

 

Vietnam also boasts advantages to cooperate with German energy companies to develop clean and renewable energies such as wind power, solar power, and hydrogen production. Especially, Germany recently backed the Group of Seven (G7)’s selection of Vietnam as a global partner in just energy transition.

 

The diplomat affirmed that this is a ‘golden opportunity’ for the two countries to promote bilateral cooperation and bring their strategic partnership to a new height, not only in politics and security, but also in economics, trade, science and technology, and education and training, and labour cooperation./.

 

Source: Vietnam News Agency