Government always accompanies businesses amid COVID-19: PM

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh speaks at the conference (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi - The Government always accompanies businesses and strives to seek solutions to remove difficulties facing the business community amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has said.

PM Chinh made the affirmation while chairing an online conference on August 8 between the Government and representatives from enterprises, business associations and localities nationwide on solutions to remove difficulties and promote production and business activities of enterprises in the context of the pandemic.

The Government leader mentioned difficulties facing production and business activities of a large number of enterprises in many localities across the country where social distancing measures are being imposed to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

With the unity and determination of the entire political system and support of businesses and the people, the fight against the pandemic has initially achieved positive results, PM Chinh said.

He stressed that the Government and the Prime Minister have issued many drastic and flexible solutions, and mobilised resources to repel the pandemic and maintain production, contributing to maintaining stable socio-economic development in the last seven months.

The PM asked participants to give practical, objective and comprehensive assessments of difficulties and challenges facing enterprises, causes and lessons, and propose specific, practical and effective solutions to those problems.

Participants pointed out a number of difficulties such as shortages of production materials; increasing transport costs; disruption of production, consumption and supply chains and export; difficult circulation of goods, shortages of local and foreign experts, and difficulties in accessing support policies of the State.

They suggested the Government, the Prime Minister, ministries, sectors and localities pay attention to solving issues related to regulations on COVID-19 prevention and control such as transport control, goods circulation, vaccinations, entry of experts, policies to support businesses affected by the pandemic, and digital transformation in enterprises.

PM Chinh acknowledged and highly valued enthusiastic and realistic comments at the meeting, saying that those will be assessed, then the Government will issue a resolution on supporting and developing businesses in the time to come.

According to the PM, despite complicated developments of the pandemic, the country's economic growth still expanded by 5.64 percent in the Jan-July period, with export-import turnover and FDI attraction increasing stably.

He emphasised the need to continue persistently implementing set measures and goals, especially giving priority to preventing the spread of COVID-19, and maintaining production in safe areas.

“We set the highest goal is to prevent health and socio-economic crises from happening, ensure the health and life of the people first, and strive to bring life back to normal in the shortest time, no later than the end of 2021 or early 2022”, he said.

The government leader asked for more strictly implementation of social distancing measures in the time to come.

Regarding the vaccination strategy, he underlined the necessity to promote the imports of vaccines, technology transfer for research and production of vaccines in the country, and accelerate COVID-19 vaccination programmes across the country.

All three issues are being directed by the Government to implement drastically by all channels and mechanisms, he noted.

The PM assigned the Ministry of Health to coordinate with relevant ministries and sectors to effectively implement the vaccine strategy, including promoting public-private cooperation and speeding up vaccinations in line with the order of priority.

The Ministry of Planning and Investment will be responsible for giving advice to the Government and the PM to come up with timely solutions to socio-economic development.

The Ministry of Finance must urgently implement tax and fee exemption and reduction solutions in order to quickly support people and businesses.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Transport was asked to taken measures to ensure the circulation of goods.