With a low starting point and more than 70% of the population living in rural and mountainous areas, the completion of that task depends greatly on the effective application of scientific and technological achievements as well as the potentials ofeach region in order to restructure and promote the development of agriculture in the direction of commodity production, controlling the domestic market, and step by step reaching out to regional and international markets.
The undertakings and policies of the Party and State all aim to affirm that the transfer of scientific and technological application in agricultural production is an especially important breakthrough in promoting agricultural production and rural economy.
On October 13, 2015, the Prime Minister signed Decision No.1747/QD-TTg approving a programme on supporting the application and transfer of scientific and technological progress to promote socio-economic development in rural, mountainous and ethnic minority areas in the 2016 - 2025 period.
After five years of implementation (2016 - 2020), 400 projects were approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology and have been implemented in 61 provinces and cities with a total investment of more than VND3.06 trillion.
According to the report of the Programme Office, after five years of implementation, the projects have brought about positive initial results in terms of science and technology. The programme is expected to transfer 2,126 turns of technologies; and trained 3,520 grassroots technicians and more than 1,800 local scientific and technological managers. It has identified suitable technologies for each region and locality, thereby building effective production models.
However, during the implementation process, there are still many problems, such as a low budget for supporting projects; the mechanism of maintaining and replicating the project model is not yet effective; andseveral of the regulations being applied to manage projects are not really appropriate.
Therefore, in order to promote and improve the obtained results, the Ministry of Science and Technology needs to continue to manage and handle issues and problems arising from approved projects; review and define objectives and contents for the 2021 - 2025 period; and give priority to the transfer of technologies for planting salt-tolerant plants in order to deal with issue of salinity.
Departments of Science and Technology should strengthen the inspection and management of projects to ensure their progress and effectiveness. It is also necessary to promote creativity in the practices of people when applying scientific and technological applications; as well as to strengthen the model of scientific and technological transfer to create linkage of production of goods by region and promote production efficiency and socio-economic development in rural and mountainous areas.
