Parliament approves State budget balance for 2014

Hanoi (VNA) – The 14th National Assembly (NA) deputies approved on July 29 a resolution on the State budget balance for 2014 with 82.59 percent of them having “yes” vote.

Accordingly, the new parliament approved 26.17 trillion VND added to the State budget expenditure estimate for 2014 due to a hike in the ODA use.

In 2014, the State budget revenue totalled 1.13 quadrillion VND, the spending was nearly 1.34 quadrillion VND, leading to an overspending of 249.36 trillion VND that represents 6.33 percent of the GDP.

Over 196.69 trillion VND sourced from domestic loans and another 52.67 trillion VND from foreign loans will make up for the overspending in 2014.

At the plenary session, part of the 14th NA’s first session, Chairman of the NA’s Committee for Financial and Budgetary Affairs Nguyen Duc Hai explained about budget-related issues raised by some deputies on July 28.

He echoed the lawmakers’ view that some localities have not done a good job of estimating budget revenue while budget expenditure plans have not been made in accordance with local reality, resulting in imbalanced spending.

The NA Standing Committee will ask the Government to direct ministries and localities make budget estimates in line with their realisation capacity and improve the quality of planning budget spending, he said.

Hai also agreed with the deputies on the prevalence of violations in spending on major construction investment projects, leading to the sluggish progress and wastefulness of many projects.

He added that the NA Standing Committee will also request the Government to redouble management over the State budget use and thoroughly address existing flaws.-VNA