Government targets six per cent growth

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung made this announcement at the closing session of the regular Government meeting on Sept. 25 and 26 in Hanoi to discuss socio-economic development in September and in the first nine months of this year.

PM Dung said that during more than six months of implementing the Party Central Committee Political Bureau’s Conclusion No. 2 and Government Resolution 11, the country’s socio-economy saw initial achievements in inflation control and stabilisation of the macro-economy.

He asked the State Bank of Vietnam to focus on controlling bad debts, adopt measures to lower interest rates and closely monitor foreign rates, while continuing a tight monetary policy and providing capital for agricultural production and small and medium-sized enterprises.

The PM also asked ministries, sectors and localities to continue examining and raising the efficiency of public investment, to ensure capital for projects close to completion, especially electricity projects, and to ease difficulties for enterprises with priority to be given to agricultural production and natural disaster control.

On the operation of State-owned enterprises over the past five years and plans for the next period, the PM asked the Finance Ministry to build a project on renovating State-owned enterprises, focusing on restructuring economic groups and corporations.

He asked ministries and sectors to strictly review management practices and to effectively incorporate socio-economic development goals in plans for 2012.

At the two-day meeting, cabinet members discussed the reasons for high inflation in Vietnam and proposed solutions for the situation.

They agreed that thanks to the implementation of synchronous and drastic measures, the country has reaped encouraging results in stabilising the socio-economic situation and curbing inflation, with the consumer price index (CPI) in September seeing the lowest increase since the beginning of this year.

During the reviewed period, the nation posted a GDP growth rate of 5.76 per cent, while raking in more than $70 billion from exports, up 35.4 per cent year on year.

As many as 675 foreign-invested projects were licensed, with a combined registered capital of over VND8.23 billion.

Beside these achievements, cabinet members realised that the trade deficit in recent months was still high (increase of 26.9 per cent over the same period last year), while enterprises met difficulties to obtain capital and input prices also remained high.

In the fourth quarter of the year, they agreed that the Government would continue to tighten monetary policies to ensure capital for essential needs for production, firstly for agriculture, followed by rural development, electricity supply and small and medium enteprises.