At a regularGovernment session held in Hanoi on Mar. 5 and 6, PM Dung issuedthis instruction after he and other cabinet members discussed thesocio-economic situation in February and the first two months of theyear, and the PM’s instructions on stabilising prices, boostingproduction and business after the traditional New Year Festival.
In the first two months of the year, the country’s socio-economy showed positive results.
TheIndex of Industrial Production (IIP) increased 3.9 percent over thesame period last year. February’s consumer price index was up 1.37percent over the previous month and much lower than the same period of2011. The foreign exchange market was stable and the country earned anestimated 8.2 billion USD from exports, despite a downturn in sometraditional markets, including the US and the EU.
However,the economy still saw some disadvantages and weaknesses with highinterest rates, liquidity difficulties at some commercial banks and acredit growth decrease affecting enterprises’ capacity to securecapital.
PM Dung concluded that it will be crucial to overcomedifficulties and weaknesses to reach targets and fulfil tasks set forthe first quarter and the whole year.
Issuing instructions, PMDung urged relevant ministries and agencies to ensure price stability,especially prices of essential products like electricity and petroleum,to maintain the mechanism of market prices and meet the goals ofinflation control at the same time.
He asked the State Bank ofVietnam to continue implementing the roadmap on reducing the bankinginterest rate to ensure suitable credit growth and solve liquidityissues while restructuring banks.
As the securities market showedoptimistic signals, it is necessary to speed up the rearrangement ofState-owned enterprises through equitisation. He also stressed the needto keep a tight control of the budget balance, maintaining a tradedeficit at about 10 percent for the whole year (equal to 2011), reducingpublic investment, as well as practising thrift and fightingwastefulness.
Together with inflation control, PM Dung also askedministries, agencies and localities to continue to ease difficultiesfor enterprises and to develop production, especially industrial andagricultural production, helping to find outlets for products andstockpiles.
At the session Deputy Prime Ministers Nguyen XuanPhuc and Nguyen Thien Nhan asked ministries, sectors and localities tocontinue taking urgent measures to ease traffic jams and reduce trafficaccidents and pay attention to training human resources for labourexport./.