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It is expected that in mid-April, Vietnam's population will reach 100 million people which could be seen as an important milestone for the country’s investment attraction and socio-economic development but also poses great challenges to human resource training, aging workforce, population and gender imbalance.
According to Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Health’s General Department of Population and Family Planning Pham Vu Hoang, with the average population growth rate in recent years, it is foretasted that in mid-April, the population of Vietnam will reach 100 million people.
With the birth of the 100 millionth citizen in mid-April, Vietnam will officially become one of 15 countries in the world and one of three countries in Southeast Asia, to have a population of 100 million or over.
The General Department of Population and Family Planning is working closely with the General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam and functional ministries and agencies to organize programs to spread the country’s important milestones. Mr. Pham Vu Hoang affirmed that a population of 100 million people will bring great human resources in many aspects for the socio-economic development of the country.
Vietnam has now entered the period known as the ‘golden population structure’, which means that there is only one dependent person for every two or more working-age persons aged 15-64 years. Moreover, the working-age population is currently approximately 68 million which provides a huge labor resource for the country.
Deputy General Director of the General Statistics Office Nguyen Trung Tien said that reaching a population of 100 million is an important milestone, creating opportunities for our country to improve its position in the region and the world in the future when all countries consider human resources as the national advantage.
This will be an opportunity for investing heavily in the education–training sector for human resource development, skill improvement and labor qualification. However, this is also a big challenge when the population aging trend is taking place rapidly.
According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Vietnam, having a population of 100 million means that Vietnam has a large domestic market with the possibility to attract more foreign direct investment with the availability of a well-educated and skilled labor force who have innovative and creative minds in the country.
According to UNFPA, thanks to progress in efforts to improve the socio-economic status, Vietnam can benefit from an increasing skilled human resource pooling. In addition, Vietnam currently has the highest proportion of the young population in the country's history while the Southeast Asian country has 21.1 percent of the population is young people between the ages of 10-24.
It is expected that Vietnam's golden population period will continue until 2039, with more young population groups who have high labor productivity; therefore, the country has the advantage of population structure to promote economic growth.
However, fertility decline is one of the challenges which push up Vietnam’s aging population process.
Declining fertility rates and limitations on the number of children and available technologies have resulted in widespread gender-biased sex selection and it is estimated 47,000 missing female births annually. It is forecasted that the country will have an excess of 1.5 million men aged 15-49 and the number will reach 2.5 million by 2059.
Affirming that Vietnam will have many opportunities for socio-economic development when reaching 100 million people, Mr. Pham Vu Hoang also acknowledged that there will be many challenges in the future such as economic issues, social security, and health care for the elderly when entering the age of the population.
Mr. Nguyen Trung Tien also analyzed, the country currently has about 38.1 million workers without professional and technical qualifications. The average income of employees is not high with an average of VND6.7 million a month in 2022. Amongst them, the group of workers without professional and technical qualifications has an average income of only VND5.7 million a month, while the average income of the group with professional and technical qualifications is 1.6 times higher, with about VND9.3 million a month.
To solve these challenges, Mr. Tien said, it is necessary to raise awareness of employees and improve labor productivity which will contribute to competitiveness improvement, business development and socio-economic development as well as synchronously-implemented solutions such as scientific-technological capacity and innovation in enterprises, linkages between the State, scientists and enterprises in order to quickly apply and transfer scientific and technological research results into production.
