SHORTCOMINGS

 

SHORTCOMINGS

 

By Van Nguyen

 

 

 

 

In March 1988, the government issued three new banknotes, the 1,000 dong bill, the 2,000 dong bill, and the 5,000 dong bill, to match up with the rising costs of living.  It was a burden for most Vietnamese, having faced soaring inflation and a rapid drop in purchasing power. Austerity was an inescapable fact of life. No one starved, but the average diet was highly deficient in protein and amounted to only 1,940 calories per day, 25 percent below the level required for manual labor. Moreover, as much as 80 percent of a worker's monthly wage was spent on food. A reader complained to a Ho Chi Minh City newspaper in 1986 that the monthly salary and price subsidies paid to an ordinary worker or civil servant were barely enough to support his family for part of the month. The writer also noted that an increasing number of workers and public officials had succumbed to the lure of "outside temptations" and were misusing their functions and power to get rich illegally.

 

  Conditions of living were deplorable. Illiteracy was high--9% of the peasantry was illiterates, and 50% of them had not finished primary education. The increase in population was another serious problem. The daily Hanoi Moi (New Hanoi), on June 4, 1992, revealed that the population in Hanoi increased to about 1 million, and the annual increase rate is 1.73%. About 100,000 inhabitants lived in ruined houses; 30,000 inhabitants were allocated each with 1.5 square meters of room for housing, and only 20% of the population in the city enjoyed 6 square meters of room per person for housing. Of more than 10,000 young married couples, only 30% are allocated private housing. Far from controlling unemployment, the communist administration failed in its control over the economic deterioration.  

 

A most visible obstacle to the economic development of the time is unemployment. The daily Quan Doi Nhan Dan (The People's Army), on June 8,1992, disclosed that Vietnam had 7 million people who were either out of work or unemployed. Most of those who were unemployed lived in cities, and 1.5 million people who did not have a regular job lived in the countryside. The daily also noted that, of 51 million people living in the countryside, 26 million people aged 15-59 were out of work. The number of unemployed people aged 15-59 increased to 75% of the total labor force. The high rate of unemployment resulted from the lack of capital, and the peasants were so poor that they could not afford to invest in grain production.

 

  By the end of the 1980's, the International Bureau of Labor predicted unemployment to be doubled by the end of 1990. It is caused by the restructuration of state enterprise and the release of soldiers from service. The number of soldiers discharged outnumbered the unemployed, estimated at 2 million. The ambitious program of restructuration, on the other hand, was inadequate. Minister of Labor, War Invalids, and Social Welfare Tran Dinh Hoan, cited in the weekly Lao Dong (The Worker), predicted that "the number of Vietnamese workers sent to the Soviet Union and East European countries will fall in the 1991-1995 period." This was due to economic difficulties, including unemployment, wracking these countries, which underwent major political changes. Up to 30 per cent of the 80,000 Vietnamese workers in the Soviet Union currently lacked employment and received tiny subsidies, making their daily lives a struggle as food prices continued to rise. Other socialist countries in Eastern Europe were facing similar problems due to political upheavals. Vietnam was likely to send workers to Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. The Ministry showed that 240,000 Vietnamese had been sent to work overseas since 1980 (FBIS, January 29, 1990: 59).

 

  Observers said there must be more profound and efficacious reforms to get the country out of this stagnant situation. To master unemployment, the Vietnamese economy must create 1.5 million jobs. Of the 30 million active workers, 20 million worked in the agricultural sector. The absorption capacity of this sector was de facto obstructed. The Vietnamese communist rule exported part of the country's work force to communist Eastern Europe. Some 200,000 workers were sent abroad in the 1980's under the so-called "cooperative socialist program." The task became increasingly difficult because of the political and economic crisis in those countries. This politics came again as exports of workers to West Europe. Because of the economic crisis in Vietnam, there were not enough jobs for these workers. The candidates considered themselves as "privileged" because the wage in West Germany was equivalent to more than 20 times that in Vietnam. However, the situation of the Vietnamese workers overseas never ceased to dilapidate. Five thousand of them, taking advantage of the opening of the Berlin Wall, evaded to the West. Thousands of them were repatriated in the past year, thus adding weight to persistent unemployment in the country.

 

   The new law on land grounded on the 1992 Constitution, as always, is aimed at transforming the peasants into "state farmers." It is additionally circumscribed by a lease that someday gave way to the manipulation by the government for political purpose, to suppress anti-socialism, for instance.  Deprived of the land to cultivate legally by the government, the peasants and their families could only live with difficulty. They suffered almost the same conditions as their compeers in the North had in the days of the bloody agrarian reforms of 1955-56. Although lowered, the taxation still remained high. The yield of crops in 1992, for example, was not sufficient enough to help them make ends meet due to the heavy costs of farming. Despite good harvests, quite a few peasants went bankrupt, because the selling price of rice in the market (averaging from 750 to 800 dong per kilogram --with one dollar equals 10,000 dong), was only equal to or lower than the cost of production. The peasants were thus no longer interested in implementing the yield of their land simply because it no longer belonged to them. The limit of three hectares per family truly deceived the old middle cultivators who had possessed more than three hectares. As a consequence, in the Mekong delta where the population was sparse and labor force was in want, the peasantry abandoned their land (Lam Thanh Liem, 1993: 4-5).  

 

      The open-door economic development 1985-1889 under the leadership of Secretary-general Nguyen Van Linh was still at the deadlock, Nguyen Cao Hach noted that “the communist administration declared that all doors should largely open to foreign investment, actually or soon to be invested, was estimated at approximately five billion dollars. We have to be taken with caution, however. Statistics published  by official sources, are generally arbitrary, and even when they come from competent authorities, they are rarely reliable. Official lies have often been made as a matter of justification for success of a policy. Take, for example, a statement on foreign investment in the “Development Program.” It ascertains that the "real GDP per capita" of the country is estimated at as much as U.S. $1,000 per capita for the period of 1985-1989. If such fact were true, the total GDP for the total population would be at as much as 65 billion dollars.  Is this a “real GDP per capita” for a country with small multifarious areas of arable land available that just got out of 30 years of warfare with poor means for construction of roads and bridges and destitute of machinery for redressing of industrial establishments? Furthermore, after decades of fata massive destruction, the country has still faced with economic failures due to ill-conceived plans seriously damaging the country’s productive geo-economic environment, making investment projects more inaccessible and investments difficult to realize (Nguyen Cao Hach. Viet Marketing and Report. 1993).  

 

       Lam Le Trinh pointed out that the “renovated” economic system following the hard times of 1996- 1992, is defined somewhat awkwardly. Typically, Article 12 of the 1992 Constitution defines it as an economic structure "with multiple sections and diverse forms of production and organization, based on a system of property, where the property of the people as a whole and the collective where the property of the people and collective property form the foundation of the system."  Such a definition would engender serious difficulties and problems to the operation of a market economy. In an interview with the daily Nguoi Viet (The Vietnamese People) in California, Nguyen Xuan Anh, the economic advisor to the Hanoi government, when asked about the chance of success of this hybrid system, said that the system is half-centralized and half free market: “I don't know. But, this is clear: Free market economy and communism do not mix (Lam Le Trinh. “The Rocky Road to Recnciliation,”1993: A5).

 

 Vo Tran Tri maintained that the communist administration had failed to control the financial resources of aid from overseas Vietnamese since foreign currencies were funneled into the hands of foreign traders in contraband. Another serious shortcoming was the skyrocketing unemployment: 20% of the working population is out of work. The problem was increasingly serious as there would be increase of 6 million in population growth annually, thus exerting heavy weight to the poor economy. As a result, Vietnam would not escape from poverty and misery.  The intelligentsia had to urge the Hanoi regime to carry out radical reforms to save the country from poverty and misery, Nguyen Hu Chung added  that, without a sound policy, Hanoi would not be able to save the lamentable economy but would only enrich a number of corrupt cadres and party members, instead (Thoi Luan. California. March 14, 1992).

 

 The shortcomings in redressing the national economy, according to Nguyen Van Tran, reside in misconception on the role of the leadership and the incompetence of the administration. Plans and programs are incomprehensive and local, focusing on the partial and immediate. The motional economic development requires unification in national administration the two regions of the country and thus the strategy for an integrated national economic development should be oriented towards unification, and not parochialism. The economic system is deviant and inefficient, worse still, it has not corresponded to the immediate economic demands, and not mentioning obstacles caused by insurmountable difficulties the country has faced in national construction. To this disadvantage, the system still encroaches on a burdensome administration with a superposition of layers of authority (Nguyen Van Tran. Viet Cho Me va Quoc Hoi, pp. 248-249).