Fon Mathuros, Head of Media, World Economic Forum: Tel.: +41 (0)79 201 0211; E-mail: fma@weforum.org
· The signing took place during the 47th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2017
· In October 2016, the Forum launched ASEAN Regional Business Council at its Mekong Meeting in Viet Nam
· For more information on the Annual Meeting, see http://wef.ch/davos17
18 January 2017 - Davos-Klosters, Switzerland – The World Economic Forum has signed a partnership agreement with Viet Nam to support the country through the next stage of its development as the Fourth Industrial Revolution unfolds.
Under the agreement, the Forum will work with Viet Nam to assess the country’s preparedness for the transformations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Forum has many ongoing initiatives in Viet Nam in areas such as food security, trade, infrastructure and the future of manufacturing. This agreement will bring these initiatives together, and launch new ones. The work will be centred heavily on the Forum’s capacity to convene world-class expertise on issues related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and to understand what impact this will have on development models, industrial structures, the inclusiveness of growth and much else besides.
“The Fourth Industrial Revolution will bring unprecedented change to every country in the world, and Viet Nam is no exception,” said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. “Viet Nam has recorded tremendous success in reaching middle-income status in just a few decades and we look forward to helping the country navigate the new global context so that it is able to raise growth and living standards even further.”
““Viet Nam is a strong and dynamic country, with a great record in improving the quality of life of our citizens. But we cannot rest on past achievements,” said Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Prime Minister of Viet Nam. “As Viet Nam is embarking on a new development stage, we must look to the future and understand the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. We strongly hope that our great cooperation with the World Economic Forum will contribute to ‘future-proofing’ our economy and ensuring that our citizens continue to benefit from our development journey.”
In the months ahead, the Forum will work with the Government of Viet Nam to assess the critical issues and areas where the country must develop its policies and practices in light of technological change and other global trends. The Forum’s work on competitiveness and the drivers of productivity, and its deep focus on the Fourth Industrial Revolution – including issues such as the rise of automation and robotics, machine learning, ubiquitous mobile internet, the internet of things and autonomous vehicles – will provide an over-arching framework for the partnership. The Forum has 14 key focus areas which may feature in the work, including the Future of Production, the Future of Jobs and Education, the Future of the Digital Economy, the Future of the Environment and Natural Resource Security, and the Future of Economic Growth and Social Inclusion.
In building the partnership, the Forum will deploy its multistakeholder model that recognizes the importance of engaging all stakeholders in addressing challenges. In Viet Nam, for example, the Forum’s work on food security is designed to improve the productivity, profitability and sustainability of smallholder farmers. But in helping these farmers, the Forum takes an end-to-end value-chain approach organized around particular crops, starting with farmers and farmer organizations, and ending with markets and the companies that buy the farmers’ produce.
The signing took place during the 47th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting taking place from 17 to 20 January in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. More than 3,000 participants from nearly 100 countries participate in over 400 sessions under the theme Responsive and Responsible Leadership.
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