The Government on May 27 asked ministers and chairmen of provincial and municipal People's Committees to collect opinions from enterprises on support policies for businesses.

The move aims to ensure timely and effective measures in helping domestic businesses overcome difficulties in production and trade.

The request was made during the cabinet monthly meeting for May.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said the Government will focus on monetary and fiscal policy measures to gradually reduce interest rates, settle bad loans, support enterprises to consume their inventories and boost demand across the economy.

In the mean time, it is necessary to control the inflation rate at 7-8 percent, stabilise the macro-economy, ensure economic growth at 6 percent and implement social security targets, he said.

The State Bank will implement loan restructuring and delay loan repayment deadlines for enterprises, especially sound businesses that are suffering temporary difficulties as well as give guidance for banks to settle bad loans.

The Government will also submit a plan to the National Assembly to reduce and exempt some businesses from taxes.

The plan calls for lowering the corporate income tax this year for small and medium-sized enterprises excluding those in the fields of finance, banking and real estate.

In addition, it suggests exempting value-added, individual income and enterprise income taxes for individuals doing business in rental accommodation for low-income people and students, child care and cafeteria services.

Measures aimed at increasing allocations of funds from the State budget and Government bonds, national-target programme investment and ODA funds to raise consumer demand as well as improve export activities should get priority as these are effective tools to settle enterprises' inventories.

Dung said although there have been some positive results in socio-economic development with growth of the consumer price index (CPI) by 0.18 percent and export turnover by 24.1 percent, difficulties in production activities remained.-VNA