Agricultural Restructuring in Vietnam over a Decade: Achievements and Unfinished Agenda for State Management

In 2013 Vietnam launched a national programme to restructure its agriculture towards higher value added and sustainable development. The programme was renewed in 2017 and 2021 and folded into a long-term strategy for 2021–2030. This article assesses what the first decade of restructuring achieved and what it left undone, with a focus on the role of the state. It relies on official statistics and policy documents for 2015–2024 and uses a target-versus-outcome assessment, trend analysis and a review of subsector evidence, without econometric modelling. The results show real but uneven progress. Agro-forestry-fishery exports doubled from USD 30.1 billion in 2015 to about USD 62.4 billion in 2024, and the sector’s trade surplus reached around USD 18 billion. Fruit and vegetable exports almost quadrupled, and rice exports set new records in value with a clear shift towards higher-quality grades. The share of agriculture in total employment fell from 44.0% to 26.5%, and the share of communes meeting new rural development standards rose from about a quarter to more than three quarters. However, sector growth fell short of the restructuring target in 2016–2020, labour productivity in agriculture remained around 40% of the economy-wide average, and the gap between the sector’s share of jobs and its share of output stayed wide. Farms remain small and fragmented, exports depend heavily on a few products and markets, forest cover targets were missed, the fisheries “yellow card” remained in place, and incentive schemes for agribusiness investment were weakly implemented. The article argues that the first decade succeeded mainly in areas where the state could act through planning, infrastructure and campaigns, and was weakest where progress depended on markets for land, services and quality. It proposes an agenda for state management centred on land markets, public goods, quality governance, market diversification and a shift from output targets to outcome measures.