Agriculture – fertile land for start-ups: Prime Minister

Agriculture – fertile land for start-ups: Prime Minister PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc (center) witnesses the signing of cooperation on start-up support between the Central Committee of the Ho CHi Minh Communist Youth Union and businesses (Photo: VNA)

The agricultural industry is a “fertile land” for start-ups, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc told more than 1,000 young people at the launch of a program encouraging youth involvement in creating start-ups in Hanoi on October 16.

The “Start-up Youth” program aims to encourage young people to develop start-up enterprises and mobilize financial, personnel and infrastructure resources to support their start-ups.

Under the program, students at universities and junior colleges will be supported to realize their initiatives and start-up ideas. Young people in rural areas will be assisted in deploying their projects in agriculture-related innovation and technological application. Meanwhile, young entrepreneurs will receive help in corporate administration, innovation and integration.

In his speech, PM Phuc said the Government will continuously create favourable policies for start-ups, adding that 91,000 businesses were set up in the first nine months of 2016. The country aims for more than 600,000 firms at the end of this year and over 1 million companies by 2020.

He emphasised that young people should not be discouraged by failures and noted that they should endeavour to turn their dreams into reality. They should try their best and weather difficulties right at school or immediately after graduating.

Their start-ups can begin with realising a business or technology idea or an idea to solve social problems such as in agriculture, poverty reduction, environmental challenges, climate change response, education and health care.

“To succeed, being industrious is not enough, young people need to keep learning, apply science-technology and improve their skills,” he said.

The PM also asked big businesses in Vietnam to be partners of potential start-ups so as to provide them with opportunities to join in their production networks, share experience, and make investments in start-ups.

At the program launch, he and officials also answered questions raised by young people.

The Central Committee of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union has debuted a council of experts supporting start-ups. It also presented VND 50 million (US$2,250) each to fund 10 start-up projects established by young people./.

Source: NDO/VNA