Dr. Nguyen Quan, newly-appointed Minister of Science and Technology, says that it is necessary to increase investment in sci-tech field by 4-5 times to have scientific products which meet expectations.

 What are the most important in your term?

 There are four key missions. The first is well implementing national goals, for example the hi-tech development program. Secondly, the Ministry of Science and Technology will focus on working out a new financial policy on sci-tech activities. The third is continuing the self-responsible mechanism and gradually giving the complete autonomy to sci-tech organizations in order to build the system of sci-tech businesses. The fourth is implementing well national level sci-tech projects to create products of highly technical values. This is the top priority.

 In your opinion, how is the position of Vietnam’s science and technology in the world?

 In Southeast Asia, Vietnam is at the same level with the Philippines and Indonesia – the average – and a little bit lower than the level of Malaysia and Thailand and lower than Singapore.

 In the world, Vietnam is very modest though we have recently made progress in creativeness index or ranked highly in Olympiad competitions.

 Why does Vietnamese sci-tech rank at lower level than its neighbors?

 The biggest reason is investment in sci-tech is low though the state spends two percent of total budget spending in this field, like others countries in the world.

 However, other countries have huge investment from the society and their GDP is very high so their budget spending is high in terms of absolute value.

 How much capital is enough?

 I think the lowest level must be 4-5 times more than the current investment, which is only $800 annually, from both the state budget and businesses while the needs is $3-4 billion.

 To have that huge capital, we need investment from the entire society, particularly the business community. It was suggested that businesses need to invest at least 10 percent of their pre-tax income in sci-tech. But we do not have binding regulations on this so we do not mobilize capital from businesses for sci-tech yet. In other countries, investment from the society is often 5-10 folds more than from the state.

 State budget is the major source of investment for sci-tech but a large part of this is used to pay wages to experts and officials at universities and institutes, otherwise brain drain will be the results.

 But many sci-tech research projects did not spend all state-allocated funding, why?

 That situation is caused by the problematic financial mechanism. Under current regulations, it needs years to complete financial formalities for sci-tech projects while the world’s sci-tech developed stormily. Therefore, when they are funded, some projects are outdated and they do not need money anymore.

 How to solve this?

 We are testing the new mechanism, under which the state places orders to sci-tech organizations and when sci-tech organizations hand over products, the state will pay. This mechanism is being implemented at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and if it is a success, it will be used on a large scale.

 Many scientists complain that they cannot live on their job. What will you do to help them be wholehearted with their job?

 Scientists suffer the highest losses among state employees. Teachers have occupational allowance and seniority allowance; civil servants have mission allowance, etc. Scientists have nothing, except for wages.

 To create the best environment for scientists, the Ministry of Science and Technology proposes to give autonomy to sci-tech organizations. With autonomy, sci-tech organizations can perform sci-tech research and do business to earn extra incomes.

 Among many difficulties, which is your biggest concern?

 It is the treatment policy for scientists and the financial policy for the sci-tech sector. I often say that these are the debt of the Ministry of Science and Technology to the scientific circles.

 As the Ministry, what will you do first?

 We can expect that by 2020, science will be the motive force for social-economic development. The first thing that I will do is trying to create a healthy and open environment to bring into full play the creativeness of scientists to produce national-level products and then international level products.

 Dr. Nguyen Quan, 56, has just been appointed as Minister of Science and Technology. Previously he was Deputy Minister of this ministry, deputy rector of the Hanoi University of Technology. He got a master degree of energy at the Asia Institute of Technology (AIT) in Thailand and the doctoral degree of energy at the Hanoi University of Technology.

 

Vietnamnet/ VNE