ABOUT THE GENERAL STATISTICS OFFICE (GSO) OF VIET NAM

Presently, GSO is an organization directly under the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) realizing the function as an adviser for the MPI Minister in state management for statistics; conducting statistical activities and providing social and economic information to organizations and individuals domestically and internationally in accordance with the law. GSO is organized into a vertical system from central to local administrative level: GSO headquarter at central level with 16 administrative units and 9 public-service units; local statistical organizations with 63 provincial statistical offices and 713 district branch offices; with total over 5,300 employees, of which women share nearly 43%, 66% of employees have graduate and post-graduate degrees.

Through two third of century establishing and developing, the statistics of Viet Nam has been asserting its important role in providing statistical information to leaders of the Party and Government, and authorities of all levels to assess, forecast, define strategies and policies, make social and economic development plans, and to organizations and individuals to meet their information needs. Information published and provided by GSO is official and legal statistics, which is trusted and used by administrative levels, line-ministries, organizations and individuals in and out the country.

In May 6, 1946, President Ho Chi Minh signed Decree No. 61/SL to establish the Vietnam Statistical Department belonged to the National Economic Ministry – the predecessor of the current statistical system and GSO and the date May 6 every year becomes the traditional day of the Viet Nam Statistics.

In recent years of renovation, the country’s statistics has made new development pace and achieved good results in every field: legal environment for the statistics strengthened, the Statistical Law and guidance documents for it  promulgated and proved positive effects; the official organizational system consolidated and improved; the statistical methodology according to the international standard improved step by step and applied successfully; widely applied modern technology in processing and communicating information; improved dissemination of statistics with diversified forms; many achievements in the field of international cooperation through GSO’s active and self-motivated integration with and participation in international statistical events …Therefore, GSO’s position has been gradually improved in the region and in the world.

However, in order to meet better need for integration and development GSO should make important paces of renovation. In March 2, 2010 the Prime Minister signed Decision No. 312/QĐ-TTg approving Project ‘Overall Renovation of statistical indicators systems’. Following, the Prime Minister signed Decision No.  1803/QĐ-TTg dated 18/10/2011 approving ‘Viet Nam Statistics Development Strategy, period 2011 – 2020 and a vision for 2030’. These are important bases for GSO to continue strengthening capabilities, developing stronger and more further the process of integration with international statistics, particularly meeting and realizing better and better the political task assigned by the Party and Government with the goal: “Viet Nam Statistics should have a rapid and sustainable development based on improving the organizational system, ensuring enough quantity and improved quality of the manpower, applying synchronously advanced statistical methodology and strengthening the use of modern technology; coming into being a centralized, uniform, smoothly-running and effective national statistical information system with more and more comprehensive  and qualified information; trying to make Viet Nam Statistics achieve good level by 2020  and advanced level by 2030 in the region.”