Spend at least 2% of the budget for cultural development

Opinions were in high agreement with the need to promulgate a Resolution to promptly institutionalize the Party's policies, especially Resolution 80-NQ/TW of the Politburo on Vietnamese cultural development; Consistently affirming the viewpoint and throughout policy of our Party and State is that cultural and human development are the foundation, important endogenous resources, great driving force, pillar, regulatory system for the rapid and sustainable development of the country. Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Lam Thi Phuong Thanh, on behalf of the agency in charge of drafting the report, further clarifies a number of major issues raised by National Assembly delegates.

The Minister said that implementing the instructions of the Central Steering Committee on cultural development, the Government has focused on building a project file for the National Assembly's Resolution on Vietnamese cultural development to institutionalize Resolution 80 of the Politburo. The resolution focuses on solving two major issues: removing bottlenecks, difficulties and obstacles in cultural development; and mobilize and effectively use all resources for cultural development.

The drafting agency has carefully studied the opinions of delegates and reviewed and revised the draft Resolution according to the principle: policies that are clear, mature, feasible, and have high consensus will be stipulated immediately in the Resolution. At the same time, we propose that the National Assembly assign the Government to detail the contents that need flexible management, and new contents that need to be piloted and issued with specific policies.

The Draft Resolution clearly identifies resources for cultural development including the annual state budget ensuring at least 2% of total state budget expenditures and mobilizing social resources. Regarding spending from the state budget, the Minister said that the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is coordinating with the Ministry of Finance, relevant agencies and localities to clearly determine the structure of this 2%, ensuring spending on culture meets the target.

Regarding Vietnam Culture Day November 24, the draft Resolution added an additional clause in Article 2 to promote cultural values ​​in the nation's major holidays, with the purpose of taking care of and ensuring that people can access and participate in enjoying culture, and at the same time improve people's ability to perceive culture, especially teenagers. The Ministry will study to receive proposals from National Assembly delegates on a mechanism to encourage private establishments to exempt and reduce fees and charges for people in attractions and activities on November 24.

Regarding mechanisms and policies to preserve the culture of ethnic minorities, folk arts, and traditional arts, the Minister said that the mechanisms, policies, and solutions are designed to prioritize financial resources to preserve and promote the fine traditional cultural values ​​of the Vietnamese peoples, cultural values ​​at risk of disappearing, and traditional arts. The Minister also received comments on policies to preserve the languages ​​and writings of ethnic groups, architectural works imbued with Vietnamese identity, temples and ancient villages; Build and implement specific mechanisms and policies for ethnic minority cultures, develop space to preserve traditional village culture associated with tourism development, and promote the role of cultural subjects to create sustainable livelihoods.

Regarding the opinions of delegates from Quang Ninh and Ninh Binh provinces about teaching traditional cultural and artistic values ​​in schools, the Minister said this is a very good proposal and the Ministry will study it to absorb it.

In addition, according to the Minister, the draft has absorbed and supplemented specific, practical policies from the grassroots that are groundbreaking and highly pervasive, such as regulations on self-organization of residential communities assigned to manage, operate, exploit and use a number of cultural and sports institutions at the grassroots.

Referring to the remuneration policy for developing specific talents and human resources in the field of culture and sports, the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism shared that currently the National Target Program on Cultural Development has many policies related to this field, such as training and fostering projects, investment programs for schools, focusing on pupils and students. The draft Resolution also has specific regulations to attract and retain good people and truly talented people in the fields of culture and sports, especially in the field of traditional folk culture and arts.

Regarding the Culture and Arts Fund, Minister Lam Thi Phuong Thanh said that after receiving opinions from the National Assembly Standing Committee and institutionalizing the Party's policies in Resolution 80 of the Politburo, the Government has added to the draft Resolution regulations on piloting the establishment of a Culture and Arts Fund according to the public-private partnership model, which is a venture capital fund, operating according to market principles, accepting risk, ensuring publicity and transparency. This is a mechanism suitable for the specific characteristics of investment in the field of culture, literature and arts, which has many potential risks.

The fund's capital sources include background capital from the budget and social counterpart sources from businesses, organizations, individuals and additional sources such as international sponsorship and other legal revenue sources. The establishment of the fund is mainly to mobilize social resources, the state budget acts as bait capital to encourage contributions from the private sector.

The drafting agency will continue to review and more closely adjust this fund model on the basis of consulting international experience and similar fund models that have been piloted in the draft Capital Law. At the same time, establish general principles to entrust the Government with detailed regulations. The Government will pay attention to the development of risk assessment criteria and risk acceptance mechanisms. During implementation, the Government will summarize, evaluate and perfect this model, ensuring effective operation and not wasting resources.

Acknowledging that digital transformation in the culture, sports and tourism industry is "a problem with many limitations", Minister Lam Thi Phuong Thanh expects that investment in digital transformation activities will build a data system, thereby scientifically and comprehensively evaluating all fields of the industry, proposing tasks and solutions to effectively implement socio-economic development programs and plans in general, and of the cultural industry in particular.