Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has urged all ministries, sectors, and localities to determinedly safeguard national sovereignty as well as a peaceful and stable environment for national development in 2015.

He made the request while chairing over the Government’s video-teleconference with localities across the country on December 29 in Hanoi.

Ministries, sectors, and localities must launch drastic moves to successfully realise socio-economic development goals and tasks set forth for 2015 by the Party Central Committee and the National Assembly to wrap up the 2010-2015 plan with the highest results.

Fostering foreign affairs, promoting proactive international integration, gathering international support, creating an environment favoured the nation-building and defence, and organising the Party Congress at all levels are other tasks for 2015, the PM noted.

Reviewing 2014’s socio-economic performance, he said the economy dealt with difficulties and challenges sparked by the complicated development of global and regional economies and politics, citing China’s illegal placement of its Haiyang Shiyou-981 drilling rig in the country’s continental shelf and economic exclusive zone as an example.

Almost all targets set for 2014 were realised, with all the three key fields of industry, agriculture and services making a recovery and gaining stable growth and GDP growth reaching 5.98 percent, higher than the set goal.

Works related to the economic restructuring, growth model change and the improvement of competitiveness and business climate were promoted and reaped good results. Foreign investment poured into the country increased sharply, reaching about 21 billion USD in newly-registered capital, which went mostly into the hi-tech industry.

During the year, political security and social order were safeguarded, while external activities were intensified, significantly contributing to creating a favourable environment to spur socio-economic development.

The PM pointed out that the national macro-economy is, however, not really stable, the quality, efficiency and competitiveness of the economy is yet improved much, the rate of poor households in ethnic minority areas remains high, and environmental pollution is facing many localities.

He said localities should learn from these limitations and roll out more efficient measures to realise the objectives outlined for 2015.-VNA