Photo: Minister of Science and Technology Nguyen Quan delivered a speech in the Opening ceremony of AMMST-14
On behalf of the host country, Minister Nguyen Quan had a welcome speech and announced the opening of the Meeting. The Minister said that S&T cooperation has been an important element to develop S&T of each nation. At the same time, this has been the necessary condition to solve many common issues of the region as well of the world as climate change, energy security, food security, environment and health. Therefore, ASEAN has defined S&T cooperation has been one of the important content within ASEAN cooperation pillars, which are politics, security – economics – culture, society.
Vietnam has always considered S&T development and use as the motivation to promote modern product forces, protect environment and natural resources, increase the productivity, quality, efficiency, development speed and competitiveness of the economy. Over the past time, especially in recent years the State has focused on investment in modern technical infrastructure as key high-techparks, laboratories, increased budget for research and development activities. At the same time, the most promoting and preferential policies within the legal framework on tax, land and other preferences have been adopted to encourage research and development organizations, enterprises which do research and apply S&T achievements in production and life.
In the Opening ceremony, Deputy Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan said that good results which ASEAN has achieved over the past time, together with high political commitment of all members have created favorable prerequisites so that ASEAN continues cooperation and strengthening collaboration, contributing to promote the prosperous development of each country.
Photo: Closely linking cooperationrelations among ASEAN countries
AMMST-14 is an important opportunity for Ministers to discuss and propose effective implementation directions and measures of objectives relating to S&T in the master plan of ASEAN community establishment roadmap as well as the implementation of ASEAN S&T Plan of Action for the 2012 – 2017 period. Fields given priority in S&T Cooperation by 2015 proposed by ASEAN S&T Committee are food security, the establishment of early advisory system in order to reduce natural disasters, biological materials, use and development of open source software, climate change,… are of important meaning because these fields have direct impacts on ASEAN countries.
Deputy Prime Minister proposed ASEAN Ministers and officials in charge of S&T to discuss together and work out appropriate cooperation directions in order to improve the level of ASEAN S&T cooperation. At the same time, it is hoped that AMMST and relevant agencies would operate more actively so that S&T achievements would be introduced more closely, served more practically for the improvement of daily life of local people and could support for the development of ASEAN country members.