In the last regular meeting of the Vietnamese government on June 2, 2016, the Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc confirmed again that the Government has taken the political responsibility for fulfilling 2016’s socio-economic development targets before the Party, State and people.
The Prime Minister asked the administration from the central to local levels to make more efforts to serve the nation’s development in order to achieve the goals.
The recent report presented by Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung showed that the national economy has recorded satisfactory signals, the macroeconomy has been basically stablised and the inflation rate was curbed thanks to timely guidelines from the Government.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) and inflation index in the period increased 1.59 percent and 1.78 percent respectively, compared to the same period last year. In addition, 5.8 billion USD of foreign direct investment (FDI) disbursed in the country in the period, an annual rise of 17.2 percent, while the total FDI registered was estimated to reach 10.6 billion USD, nearly 2.4 times higher than that reported in the same period last year.
Around 44,740 new enterprises were established in the reviewed period, a year-on-year increase of 24.1 percent, according to the report.
Regarding socio-economic measures, the Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc requested cabinet members to closely control prices and not to be subjective in curbing inflation. The Prime Minister ordered ministries to coordinate effectively in managing prices as well as implementing fiscal and monetary policies.
The Prime Minister also asked for more efforts to mobilise resources from the public to serve development goals, improve the business and investment environment and speed up administrative reform.
Ministries, sectors, economic groups and localities has been asked to design detailed plans to speed up equitisation of state-owned enterprises and divestment from non-core business and report the plans back to the Prime Minister in June, 2016.
The Prime Minister urged ministers, particularly newly-appointed ones, to prepare action plans that improve their management to fulfill socio-economic development targets.
The Prime Minister also required the State Bank of Vietnam to build a plan to cut the lending interest rate as part of efforts to support local production and business operation. He also ordered the stepping up of disbursement of state budget-sourced and ODA capital to enable investors to execute their projects. While the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education and Training, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Planning and Investment and other functional agencies has been assigned to build complete mechanisms and policies on start-ups and submit them to the Government in July, 2016 to support the start-up movement in young people.
The Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc showed his worries about wasteful public spending, demanding the Ministry of Finance screen the management and use of public assets, especially in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, and resolutely cut unnecessary expenditures, in particular those paid for meetings and overseas trips.
On agricultural sector, the Prime Minister asked for the building and deployment of a comprehensive agriculture restructuring programme while highlighting “the new-style rural area construction programme as a new revolution in Vietnam” that needs various resources to succeed.
For social security, the Prime Minister stressed the need to promptly provide assistance for residents in areas hit by natural disasters, droughts and saltwater intrusion, implement social housing programmes efficiently, prevent injuries and accidents for children, and reduce the unemployment rate, among others.
He ordered relevant agencies to strictly monitor sources that caused environmental pollution, calling on them to be proactive in protecting the ecosystem and stringently punish individuals and organisations violating environmental protection. He asked for the effective settlement of petitions and denunciations and strict punishments for those committing actions against on-duty officers and sparking social disorder.
The Prime Minister told that the Government would not adjust socio-economic development targets due to challenges over past months but will strive to overcome these difficulties to meet the economic growth rate targeted in the Resolution of the 12th National Party Congress.
According to the Government’s report, total state budget collection reached only 34 percent of targets in the period. Industrial production recovered slowly over the past five months. Total exports gained nearly 68 billion USD, a year-on-year increase of nearly 7 percent. The consumer price index (CPI) increased 1.88 percent in the past five years. This was attributed to price hikes of oil, gas and food. The CPI from now to the end of the year is expected to suffer from surges in education and medical fees.