Vietnam to stick with open-door policy-report
HANOI - Vietnam has no intention of abandoning its open-door policy to foster development but also intends to focus on using its internal resources, Communist Party Secretary General Le Kha Phieu said.
Phieu, the country's top official, made the remarks in an interview with a Vietnam Foreign Ministry journal published on Friday in the Nhan Dan newspaper, the communist party mouthpiece.
``In no place can people close the door themselves. If the door is closed, then it will open later itself and this is the same for Vietnam,'' Phieu said.
``In this situation closing the door and carrying out modernisation and industrialisation...is an illusion.''
Phieu, who became secretary general late last year, was responding to a question quoting some foreign observers as saying Vietnam had become more inward looking since the last Communist Party congress in 1996.
Vietnam threw open its doors to foreign trade and investment in the late 1980s and freed parts of the economy from state control, triggering a commercial and foreign tourist boom.
However, elements in the communist party have reacted with alarm to some social changes brought about by a decade of reform and open-door policies.
Campaigns to stamp out ``social evils'' such as prostitution and drug abuse peaked at the time of the 1996 congress.
Last September the official Vietnam News Agency said foreigners were engaged in
widespread crime and subversion.
Phieu, a former military commissar, said Vietnam would also focus on its internal resources.
``If we rely on just foreign money to carry out industrialisation it's difficult to maintain economic and political independence,'' he said.
Phieu also made clear that the country's plan to sell off parts of state-owned enterprises, called equitisation in Vietnam, would not lead to full privatisation.
``We must understand that equitisation of the state sector is not privatisation and it doesn't mean that the following stage is privatisation,'' he said.
REUTERS - April 3rd 1998.
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