NA searches for ways to grow the middle class There are signs that wages and compensation packages are beginning to rise in parts of the country, said NA deputies at the 13th National Assembly— but in Vietnam they are not keeping up with other parts of the world.  “Keeping workers productive while securing increased disposable incomes is vital to the nation’s long-term success,” said NA Deputy Do Manh Hung from the northern province of Thai Nguyen Hung said because of its pre-eminence as a factor on the national economy’s sustainable development, NA deputies should focus on ferreting out the causes and finding viable solutions. NA Deputy Ngo Duc Manh from the southern province of Binh Thuan focused in on labour productivity in the country, noting on a per capita basis it is lagging far behind that experienced in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. Recently, there have been many reports in the Vietnam news media citing workers as the main cause of low labour productivity, said Manh – however that is not the root cause of the problem. “All across this country, workers on the assembly lines in industrial parks are toiling away at their jobs, working hard, trying to get ahead and increase their incomes to improve the quality of life for their families,” Manh emphasized. Manh said he believes the lack of past exposure to global best practices and low competitive intensity are the main culprit and cited statistics showing the national economy’s competitive edge ranks just 56th in the world and behind the Philippines. In the past capital investment in modernizing the workplace was much to low and naturally it follows that workers never had the opportunity to develop the skillsets required to compete in the global marketplace. Now all that is changing and we –  as a nation –  need to insure businesses, particularly small business have access to better training to match the current workplace requirements. Manh underscored his point that the way to boost GDP and GNP growth sustainably is to provide workers more access to global best practices and training to improve their skillsets. “Currently statistics show that only 20% of the workforce in Vietnam can be considered skilled, which figure is far too low and the NA should focus on enlarging this number,” Manh emphatically said. Manh then changed the subject to that of integration, suggesting the business community needs to raise its awareness of the issue in general and the ASEAN Economic Community in particular. In his opinion, the more businesses stay abreast of market changes the better they will be positioned to devise timely measures to adjust and that contributes to increased competitiveness, a prerequisite to growing the nation’s middle class.  VOV