Competitive position of Vietnamese regions: analysis of results of provincial competitiveness index

The existence of certain conditions and elements that creates a region’s investment attractiveness is seen to be a challenging and complicated process which leads to a competitive position in respect to other regions in comparison with other ones. The study includes the analysis of the region’s economic and investment situation, and the comparison of provincial competitiveness indexes (PCI) in Vietnam from 2017 to 2021. It should supplement the methodology for regional competitiveness assessment at the involvement and business support. This allows choosing a leading region characterized by a stable and relatively high competitive position compared to the rest of the regions (like Red River Delta region). This clear spatial disparity in regional competitiveness in Vietnam may result from long-term social and economic processes (such as economic growth and investment attraction), and quality of the business environment that depends on the authorities’ ability to work (by means of PCI ranking promotion). As for the second case, the directions of strengthening the competitive position of Vietnam’s regions are expecte to be dynamics in innovation, and persistence in executing institutional reforms in “tougher” areas such as market entry costs, policy bias, transparency, time costs and labor training. The key directions for competitiveness improvement and investment attraction promotion in the short and medium term are as follows: 1) promotion of reforms and transparency of information on administrative procedures for the enterprise; 2) cost reduction of professional training and business satisfaction growth with labor quality; 3) communication strengthening and cooperation between public and private sectors;4) operating methods renewal of the administrative system in accordance with the process of digital technology application in government management.