Illustrative image (Source: VNA)HCM City (VNA) – Ho Chi Minh City collected nearly 280 trillion VND (12.6 billion USD) to the local budget in 2015, surpassing the yearly estimate by 5.04 percent and posting an annual increase of 10.7 percent.
Director of the municipal Department of Finance Phan Thi Thang raised the figures at a conference in the city on December 30.
Excluding crude oil, the local budget collection in 2015 reached over 253 trillion VND (11.4 billion USD), including nearly 160 billion VND (7.2 million USD) from domestic sources (up 21.16 percent) and over 94 trillion VND (4.23 billion USD) from imports-exports (up 6.55 percent).
Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong revealed that the city aims to collect over 298 trillion VND (13.4 billion USD) to the local budget in 2016, up 12 percent against the 2015 estimate.
To realise the target, he asked the taxation sector to strengthen management measures to ensure sufficient and prompt collection in accordance to law while actively addressing setbacks in the field.
Meanwhile, the finance department along with tax, customs and treasury agencies should focus on administrative reform and personnel capacity improvements to increase transparency and win trust from locals and businesses, he suggested.
Phong requested the district-level People’s Committees to play a key role in directing the budget management as well as make the best use of revenue sources from transactions relating to land and housing.
He recommended businesses to improve production and management capacity, increase access to markets and develop Vietnamese brands.
The Department of Finance unveiled that as of December 30, 2015, the local budget spending totaled at 55.5 trillion VND (2.5 billion USD), exceeding the yearly estimate by 1.64 percent, of which nearly 28 trillion VND (1.26 billion USD) was spent on construction projects for various fields such as transport, inundation prevention, education-training, and healthcare.
On the occasion, the municipal People’s Committee presented certificates of merits to 10 businesses and 24 districts for significant contributions to the State budget collection across the city in 2015.-VNA
