HANOI, July 5 (Xinhua) -- At a national conference on Thursday in Vietnam's Hanoi capital, Ousmane Dione, country director for the World Bank (WB) in Vietnam discussed four megatrends affecting Vietnam's sustainable and competitive development.

"I propose to focus on four specific megatrends. They are shifting trade patterns, rise of the knowledge economy, climate change, and an aging population," Dione said at the conference themed "Enhancing Competitiveness, Realizing Sustainable Development Goals amidst the Industrial Revolution 4.0" with the presence of Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

According to Dione, trade is slowing, which generates greater competition for countries like Vietnam which has benefited from a robust foreign direct investment sector that has directly employed about 2.4 million workers.

"Yet neighboring countries, such as Cambodia and Myanmar, are emerging as competitors for low-skilled production jobs," he said.

Regarding the rise of the knowledge economy and automation, a critical challenge in Vietnam is that only 8 percent of the labor force has a university education, which is insufficient to make the leap into the knowledge economy, the WB official stated.

Meanwhile, climate change poses a significant risk to Vietnam, he said, noting that rising sea-levels expose a third of the country's population to the risk of flooding, growing to more than 80 percent in the Mekong and Red River deltas.

"Changing salinity threatens the two-thirds of Vietnam's fish from aquaculture. And land subsidence, paired with increased salinity in the Mekong Delta, puts at risk the livelihood of 13.6 million rice farmers," Dione said.

According to him, Vietnam is about to experience the fastest pace of population aging in history. The share of the population aged 65 or over was 6.5 percent in 2017, and that is expected to reach 21 percent by 2050.

"That means one in every five people will be elderly. This has many negative implications for Vietnam's labor supply, long-term productivity growth, the pension and social assistance system," the WB official stated.