North Hamgyong Province’s party committee recently subjected provincial trade officials to a party lecture on anticipated trade activity, Daily NK has learned.
A source in the province told Daily NK on Friday that the provincial party committee gathered local trade officials in late October for two days of lectures.
“The meetings focused on the officials obeying the national trade management system, unlike in the past, when trading companies followed the provincial system,” he said.
At the meeting, the provincial party committee reminded participants that North Hamgyong Province plays a critical role in state-led trade given how it borders China, and stressed how trade officials will need to bring an “innovative attitude” to their future trading activity while paying heed to the national trade management system.
Above all, the provincial party committee stressed that trade activity must take place under the national trade management system.
The source said the provincial party committee criticized how trade has been conducted in a haphazard, random and less-than-productive way since the Arduous March (a period of mass famine in the 1990s) and other tough times.
“They said that attitude is not socialist, and we must conduct trade in accordance with the social system everywhere, and at all times,” he said.
“The provincial party committee also said North Hamgyong Province’s trade officials should get a firm grasp on all party and state trade policies and implement the state-first principle, not trade that benefits only North Hamgyong Province, engaging in trading activity with the sublime concept of the state-first principle and rock-solid conviction,” he added.
The provincial party committee also called on trade officials to create a new “watershed” during the next 20 years of trade activity.
In regards to this, the party committee promoted how the Workers’ Party is now appealing to trade officials to “entirely abandon the trading practices of the last two decades and create a new advance and innovation in the trade sector meshing with the dignity and ideology of our state.”
The source said the party committee called on trade officials to “complete and develop a cooperative system of trade innovation right for our state by opening a new era of trade ‘in our-style’ that elevates the lives of the people and the trade status of the nation to those of a powerful state with the cooperation of state trade guidance agencies.”
However, provincial trade officials who took part in the meeting responded with criticism, the source said.
According to him, provincial trading officials said in trade, trust comes first, but over the last three years due to COVID-19, some trading companies have been unable to pay their Chinese counterparts for goods received, while others have been unable to receive refunds.
“They said if [the authorities] refuse to ensure that trading companies have autonomous decision-making authority, with the state deciding everything, they doubt the direction trade will take, and suspect that we will really switch over to state-led trade,” the source explained.
Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
