The region is an entity, the development of which is planned with a long-term vision, in Vietnam. The State has a policy for regional development, including regional development planning. Over the past years, the implementation of regional planning has contributed positively to regional and national socio-economic development and security. | Regional Development Policies in Vietnam Nguyen Danh Son1 1 Institute of Regional Sustainable Development, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences. Email: danhson@ Received: 3 July 2017. Accepted: 30 July 2017. Abstract: The region is an entity, the development of which is planned with a long-term vision, in Vietnam. The State has a policy for regional development, including regional development planning. Over the past years, the implementation of regional planning has contributed positively to regional and national socio-economic development and security. However, there are also several issues posed for the regional development policy, . there are too many areas of planning, the overlaps among economic regions and key economic areas, or the lack of regional connectivity. The fundamental view in renovating and completing the policy is the linkage for development based on ensuring the interests in regional development. Keywords: Regional planning, regional development policy, linkage for development, Vietnam. Subject classification: Economics 1. Introduction In Vietnam, a region is defined as part of the national territory which hosts a number of relatively independent socio-economic activities following the social division of labour of the country. From a legal perspective, a region is not classified as a State administrative unit. In fact, it is a territorial unit established to serve the strategic planning and regional planning for the socio-economic development of each region. It also helps to perform the management of socio-economic development processes in every region and link all the administrative units within and outside a region to promote common development goals. A lot of regional development policies have been issued and implemented in practice. At the moment, the most comprehensive policy documents on regional development are Decree of the Government dated 7 September, 2006 on the compiling, approval and management of .
