Minute of the First Meeting of All Teams of VERN Project

The first meeting of all research teams of VERN Project was held at the Institute of Economics on 2 October 2003, from 9:00-16:30. The 6 research teams were selected according to Decisions dated 25 June 2003 and dated 22 August 2003 by the Director of the Institute of Economics Prof. Dr. Do Hoai Nam. The selected research teams comprises of the following:

1. Group 1 with the research title "Trade Liberalization and Employment in Agricultural Sector - The Case of Central Provinces, Vietnam" led by Bui Thi Tam.
2. Group 6 with the research title " From Productivity to Competitiveness: Three Essays on How Competitive Edge of Vietnam’s Textiles and Garments Firms Can Be Improved" led by Dang Nhu Van.
3. Group 9/34 with the research title " Wage and employment effects of trade reform: The case of Vietnam" led by Nguyen Thi Lan Huong and Doan Hong Quang.
4. Group 13 with the research title "Trade Liberalization and Non-farm Household Enterprises in Vietnam: Challenges or Opportunities ahead?" led by Tran Quoc Trung.
5. Group 23 with the research title "“Determining the Factors Affecting on the Competitiveness of Enterprises in Vietnam Foodstuff Processing Industry in the Process of Integration. (The Case Study for Ho Chi Minh City)” led by Nguyen Thi Canh.
6. Group 26 with the research title "Export Competitiveness of Vietnam, China, and members of ASEAN in US and Japan Markets" led by La Hai Anh.

All team leaders were present in the meeting. Some team members were not present in the meeting because of some important commitments. All staff in the VERN project office (VERN Network Leader, VERN Coordinator and members of the Local Technical Assistance Team) and VERN international advisor, Mr. Remco Oostendorp, also attended the meeting.

The meeting was started by Nguyen Thang, the VERN Network Leader. He briefly mentioned the focus areas of VERN (Trade, Employment and Firm-Level Competitiveness) and objectives of VERN (Capacity building for Vietnamese researchers; Producing high quality, policy relevant research and improving the link between research and the policy making process; Expanding the well-coordinated research network in Vietnam; and Improving the link between research and teaching at university level) so that all teams could have a better understanding about the Network. He encouraged members of all teams to actively participate in the meeting and to hold the meeting in an informal but effective way so that all teams can share information and their experience with each other fruitfully.

Then the teams presented their research proposals, working plans for the next 5 weeks and 3 months as well as their expectations on how VERN international advisors, VERN project office and the local technical assistance team can assist the team in implementing their project. After each presentation, there were discussion and comments by Nguyen Thang, Remco Oostendorp and other researchers on the proposal. While presenting proposals, some teams realized that their research was somewhat similar to the other in terms of methodology (Group 1 and Group 13, Group 6 and Group 23). Therefore, they could exchange idea and experience as well as challenges that they may face while doing the research. This made the teams find that networking activities of VERN were really fruitful. VERN project office encouraged all teams to contact with each other while doing their project to share information, initial research results as well as other issues arising.

The discussion also revolved around whether all teams will use the same software program, namely STATA, or each team will use the software program that they know best to analyse data. Because some teams are not familiar with STATA, they will need technical assistance in the form of training about how to use this software program. The VERN project office encouraged teams use STATA as the common software program in the network, which would facilitate information sharing most effectively within the network. VERN office will provide training about STATA to any teams at their request.

With regard to the assistance that the teams expected from international advisors and VERN office, following issues were discussed. First, teams expect that VERN office will help to collect trade data, latest I-O table for tariff analysis component in some sub-projects. Under VEEM, a comprehensive trade policy analysis was conducted. Therefore, VERN research leader and the international and local technical assistance team could provide training on how to calculate trade policy indicators. The level of technical assistance depends on requests by teams. Moreover, the technical assistance team may even calculate all trade indicators for the use of all teams. Second, based on experience gained from previous researches carried out under VEEM project, team 6, 13, and 23 expected that VERN would help them to design appropriate questionnaire to collect information for their projects. In addition, VERN can also help team to learn how to establish connection with firms or households to carry out surveys successfully and to provide the teams with official letter signed by the project’s Director for access to firms or households. Third, the international advisors are in a good position to provide teams with world's best practices in the field that they are investigating. These advisors are also in a good position to advise teams on the most appropriate methodologies to carry out their research. Fourth, it is necessary to have general meeting to be organized regularly. The next general meeting is tentatively scheduled for the Midle of February, 2004.

Date: 2 October 2003