On June 2nd, 2018 in Hanoi, the Government held its regular monthly Meeting for May 2018. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc chaired the Meeting.
At the meeting, the following topics were raised and discussed: the implementation of the Government's Resolution No. 01/NQ-CP and the socio-economic situations in May and the first 5 months of 2018; the allocation of capital investment plans from different revenues; the situation of the use of the central budget contingency funds; the performance of the tasks and the inspection results for May 2018 of the Prime Minister’s Working Group; etc.
During the discussions at the meeting, the Government members unanimously agreed that the socio-economic situations in May and the first 5 months of 2018 continued the positive trends. The macroeconomic situation is stable, the inflation is under control, the average consumer price increase is lower than the same period of 2017, and within the targets set by the National Assembly; the money and foreign exchange markets are stable, and the system’s liquidity is in good shape with stable interest rates; the State budget revenues and expenditures are basically assured; the disbursements of the expenditure plans from the State budget have improved; the FDI disbursements were quite good, and higher than the same period of last year.
The production and business situation is progressing positively; the social security and people's living standards have been improved; the political security, social order and safety are maintained. However, the members of the Government also recognized that the economy is still facing many difficulties and challenges; the growth of processing and manufacturing industries has slowed down; the pace of bad debt handling is still slow; logistics costs are still high; poor management of public assets and lack of control in many places have caused losses and wastes; the restructuring of the industries has not been done systematically and is still facing lots of issues; the establishment and development of the value chains are still limited; there are yet not many strong and high quality brands...
Overview of the Meeting
In his conclusions, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc requested that the ministries, agencies and local authorities continue to actively monitor, closely administer the developments in the domestic, regional and global situations in order to have timely policy responses; concentrate on directing drastic and synchronous implementation of the identified tasks and solutions. At the same time, in the context of stable macroeconomic conditions and positive growth, it is necessary to further enhance the restructuring of the economy, promote the growth of labor productivity, speed up the institutional reform and corporate restructuring, promote private businesses and start-ups, restructure the public debts, effectively control of the inflation...
The Prime Minister emphasized the requirement for executive measures to keep the inflation rate below 4%, which must be widely disseminated to all levels, agencies and local authorities. In inflation control, the Prime Minister requested that the market conditions be followed closely, and basically not to increase electricity prices this year, and only make proper adjustments of healthcare and education service prices if the conditions permit, and at a suitable time. Along with that, the money supply and the fiscal policy have to be regulated in a proper manner, so as not to create big pressure for increased prices...
On the other hand, the fiscal policy and the monetary policy have to be coordinated closely, steadily aiming at stabilizing the macro-economy. The price adjustments of state-controlled commodities must be done in a prudent manner; continuing the restructuring of the state budget revenues and expenditures; strongly conducting thrift practice and waste combat, saving on recurrent expenditures on procurements and meetings…Tax inspections and examinations have to be enhanced, with strict management of VAT declarations and reimbursements; conducting effective measures to prevent tax losses from acts of transfer pricing, smuggling and trade frauds; and recovery of tax-in-arrears.
Being more drastic in the restructuring of credit institutions associated with handling of bad debts and weak credit institutions; promoting the development of non-cash payments; intensifying the application of new and modern payment instruments on the basis of advanced technologies; ensuring security and safety in electronic payment activities and in card payments.
Focusing on solutions to stabilize the interest rates, striving to reduce the lending interest rates; implementing robustly and effectively the credit programs with the principle of credit expansion has to be accompanied by improved credit quality, ensuring the supply of capital for the economy, and creating favorable conditions for the access to the banks’ capital; promoting disbursements in the credit programs for production and trading areas, and the priority sectors; at the same time strictly controlling credits for areas of potential risks...
Along with identifying the key tasks that the ministries, agencies and local authorities need to speed up in the implementation, the Prime Minister also requested the PM's Working Group to constantly monitor and supervise the implementation of the PM-assigned tasks by the Ministries, agencies and local authorities, and to report with publicity at the Government’s regular meetings.
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