Premiership
As premier Đỗ Mười supported a cautious implementation of the reform program. In April 1987 farmers in southern Vietnam began protesting against collectivised agriculture, with some even occupying collective farm offices. The response of the authorities varied; Đỗ Mười responded by stating that low productivity in agriculture was an organisational problem, and not a systematic one. He claimed that productivity was influenced by level of input, but since the level of input varied regionally, the solution would be the decentralisation of management of collective farms. The farms, in his mind, woud rely on detailed local planning, regular land inspections and good land management and organisation. This solution would, he believed, solve the wasteful expenditure on agriculture and inappropriate allocation and utilization of land.
Đỗ Mười was appointed Chairman of the Socio-economic Drafting Subcommittee of the Council of Ministers in 1989 or 1990. The committee was tasked to draft a socio-economic strategy for the Vietnamese economy until the year 2000. Its members also discussed the main orientation of Fifth Five-Year Plan (1991–1995), the next five-year plan.
At the 10th Plenum of the 6th Central Committee (held September 1990), Đỗ Mười's report to the plenum stressed the effects of the substantial drop of Soviet and Eastern Bloc assistance levels to Vietnam, the concurrent increase in imports, the level of national debt and "natural calamities" in agriculture. Đỗ Mười laid emphasis on political stability, repair of the banking and monetary system, controlling inflation and "wasteful spending" and "excessive capital construction plans." In his plans for 1991, Đỗ Mười sought to;
- strengthen ties with foreign countries to develop markets for Vietnamese products, to draw increased foreign investments to Vietnam, and to obtain foreign technology;
- eliminate state subsidies in production, business and capital construction;
- rationalise state policies by privatising inefficient state-run enterprises;
- encourage family-based economic units; and
- emphasise the well-being of the population by undertaking regional development, creating employment and reducing unemployment.
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