ASEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY AND THE COMPETITIVENESS OF VIETNAMS AGRICULTURAL SECTOR

Abstract

In the last ten years, Vietnam has become an agricultural country to be reckoned with in the international market. However, the competitiveness of Vietnamese agricultural sector is still unstable, especially when compare to the Thailand in the long-run. Moreover, Vietnam has to fight with the implementation of AEC in full at the end of 2015 which implies the increasing levels of competition in Southeast Asia. Understanding the developments of Vietnams agriculture in the face of various challenges and opportunities through the implementation of AEC become the major purpose of this research. Qualitative methods used to analyze primary data were collected through indepth interview and several secondary data that has been collected. The results of this research shows that Vietnam face two major obstacles in producing agricultural commodities that safe and have high quality plus the low labor productivity. Nevertheless, the Government of Vietnam conducting several policies in improving the quality and safety of agricultural commodities such as the No Early Spray Campaign, 3G3R and 1M5R. Moreover, through the mechanism of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP), the Government of Vietnam strives to bridge the mutually beneficial cooperation between farmers and companies. In addition, the Government of Vietnam is trying to take benefits from the AEC to increase the flow of foreign investment to build its agricultural sector by providing various incentives for supporting potential investors.