The Government’s regular meeting – June 2010

RESOLUTION  

The Government’s regular meeting – June 2010

During its regular meeting for June 2010 convened on July 1-2, the Government discussed and decided the following issues:

1. The Government debated reports on: Socio-economic performance in June and the first six months, and domestic and international economic forecasts; on the Cabinet’s performance and management over the implementation of its Working Regulations in the first half and the agenda for the rest of 2010; on inspection, settlement of complaints and accusations, anti-corruption work in the first half; on administrative reforms in Q2; on the implementation of Việt Nam’s international commitments; on the Government’s drafting and submission of Bills and ordinances in Q2 and in the first six months; on the outcomes of the secondary school final examination 2010; and on the Program on national product development, respectively presented by the Minister of Planning and Investment, the Minister-Chairman of the Office of Government, the Chief Inspector, the Minister of Home Affairs, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Education and Training, and the Minister of Science and Technology.

Since the beginning of 2010, the global and domestic economies have recovered positively but negative factors also have emerged, affecting macro-economic stability and put brake on economic recovery pace. The Government timely shifted the focus from restoring growth pace and controlling inflation to ensuring macro-economic stability, preventing high inflation rate, and striving for a 6.5% GDP growth rate this year. The Government comprehensively deployed series of fiscal-monetary-trade-investment-production and information policies to harmonize the interrelationship between macro-economic stability and economic growth, realizing the dual target of controlling inflation and securing macro-economic stability and growth pace.

Basically, the Government’s macro-level performance and specific policies were appropriate to the actualities, which helped produce practical and effective results. The national economy continued to expand in the first half and gained positive and comprehensive changes. Macro economic indexes are basically kept stable: the inflation was controlled (consumer price index in the reviewed period increased by 4.78% against December last year); budget collection rose fairly high; capital mobilization and disbursement for development investment was on the rise; export turnover went up while trade deficit started to downsize; capital mobilization, credit balance and total means of liquidity were going up gradually, in line with the overall preset target of maintaining macro-economic stability, preventing high inflation and securing economic growth; borrowing and lending rates fell down; the banking system operated in safety; securities and foreign exchange markets, and exchange rate ran stably. In the January-June period, the economy expanded at 6.16%, a higher figure against the same period last year. Industrial-construction output value grew by 6.5%, agriculture-forest-aqua-culture and service sectors up by respectively 3.31% and 7.05%, tourism alone posted a 32.6% increase. Social security continued to be ensured. Other fields like education, labor, employment, healthcare, and socio-cultural affairs made progressive changes. Administrative reforms, settlement of complaints, and anti-corruption were promoted. Socio-political stability; national defense, social security and safety were guaranteed. The above achievements have constituted premises and consolidated our confidence to strive for the realization of the socio-economic targets of 2010 and the five–year socio-economic development plan 2006-2010.

However, the economy still ran across difficulties, namely: High trade deficit; sky-rocketing prices of input materials, which put pressure on the consumer price index; high interest rates; electricity shortage in Q2; natural calamities-droughts-epidemics adversely affected production and people’s life; and some social targets made slow progress.

In order to realize this year’s key socio-economic targets that were approved by the National Assembly, the Government required ministries, sectors, and localities to boost coordination in translating into reality the solutions enshrined in the Government’s Resolution 03/NQ-CP dated on January 15, 2010, and Resolution 18/NQ-CP dated on April 6, 2010, and all monthly resolutions adopted so far this year. They must also focus on the following solutions:

- The Ministry of Finance will be responsible, in collaboration with other ministries, sectors and localities, for consolidating management over and raising people’s sense of responsibility for saving and effectively using the State budget spending; striving for higher excess of budget collection and reducing budget overspending; controlling business costs and cost prices, supervising the enforcement of regulations on prices of essential goods, seriously imposing penalties on those who intentionally infringe the price-bound regulations. Ministries, sectors, and localities should continue to closely follow changes in domestic and international goods and service markets in order to properly regulate the supply-demand regulatory measures, to enhance supervision over the enforcement of price control regulations in their own assigned areas to avoid goods shortage, price escalation, and improper price increase.

- The Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Health, based on their competence, will serve as prime implementers, in collaboration with localities, to examine and supervise the production, import, registration, and price listing of milk and medicines on their respective markets, at drugstores and hospitals; propose effective ways to manage these products.

- The State Bank of Việt Nam will continue to properly regulate the volume of money put into circulation to ensure the 20% increase in the total means of liquidity and 25% in credit balance in order to meet businesses’ thirst for capital; use monetary policies to gradually lower interest rates; appropriately manipulate the relationship between foreign currency and VND interest rates; flexibly regulate the exchange rate and foreign exchange policies in a stable manner, which is in conformity with macro indexes, facilitate export, reduce trade deficit, improve payment balance and increase foreign currency reserve; study and assess consequences caused by changes in the regional and international financial and monetary markets to timely propose proper macro policies.

- The Ministry of Industry and Trade will be responsible for regulating import by strictly controlling it, erecting and enforcing technical barriers against imports for specific purposes, supervising and limiting the import of non-essential goods and products to keep the trade deficit less than 20% of the total export turnover; coordinating with ministries, sectors, and localities to continue speeding up export and developing auxiliary industries to spur export values; seriously enforcing solutions to meet the electricity demand for production, business and people’s life, and at the same time, to balance power resources for 2011 and the following years; proposing and organizing the implementation of measures to save electricity in production and consumption.

- To continue removing obstacles and creating favorable conditions for all economic sectors’ operations. To speed up the social involvement in development investment through encouraging all economic sectors to join hands in specific projects.

- To actively speed up the capital disbursement while strictly checking the quality of projects, particularly those on hospitals, schools, student hostels, transport, and irrigation works; to initiatively shift capital to key and urgent projects that can be completed right in 2010 or 2011; to submit to the PM for consideration of the capital advance for the ongoing State-funded projects that can be completed in 2010-2011 but are pending because of capital shortage. The Ministry of Planning and Investment will inspect and urge the implementation of State-funded projects; cancel or cut down on the investment capital for unnecessary and ineffective projects; and strictly control bidding activities relating to urgent and key projects.

The Chairpeople of provincial-level People’s Committees will drastically direct the compensation, site clearance, and hand-over of lands so that all projects can be deployed on schedule, particularly the construction of highways linking Hà Nội with Lào Cai, Thái Nguyên, and Hải Phòng.

- To further direct the effective enforcement of the adopted policies, programs and projects on social security; to review the national goal programs on poverty reduction and job creation in the period of 2006-2010, develop new similar programs for the period of 2011-2015; to early issue a new poverty benchmark in conformity with realities and launch a census on poor households for the 2011-2015 period; to quickly issue and deploy the Strategy on social security until 2020 and the Project on social security system for rural residents 2011-2020; to quickly implement the Government’s Decree on credit for agriculture and rural development and other decree on encouraging businesses to pour capital in agriculture and rural development.

- To quickly finalize the agriculture and rural development planning scheme in line with the master plan, then design specific plans to develop new rural areas in long term; upon its real conditions, each locality can choose some of new rural criteria that can be feasibly put into reality, at first, focusing on education and healthcare development nationwide.

- The Ministry of Science and Technology will take prime resonsibility, in collaboration with relevant agencies, for collecting the Cabinet members’ comments to finalize the national product program until 2020 in the direction of synchronous investment in research and application of state-of-the-art technologies for the development of new products or products of Việt Nam’s comparative advantages as the national or international-standard products, contributing to higher productivity, quality, and competitiveness of Vietnamese goods, and speeding up the shift of economic and product structures, then submit the program to the PM for approval.

- The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be responsible, in collaboration with relevant agencies, for well preparing the 17^th ASEAN Summit, ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM ) in October 2010 and other diplomatic activities for the rest of this year.

- The Ministry of Information and Communications will coordinate with the Party Central Commission for Propagation and Education to further direct mass media to actively disseminate the Party and State’s guidelines and policies, the Government and PM’s instructions, and the country’s socio-economic achievements, in order to create social consensus and consolidate people and businesses’ confidence to strive for the fulfillment of preset targets; to actively feed the public with accurate information relating to the country’s important, unexpected, and essential events.

- Ministries and agencies need to prepare well for each and every bills and draft ordinances before inserting them into their law-making programs to keep off hasty adjustments in these documents that may badly affect the agendas of both the Government and the NA; to expand capacity and working conditions for the law enforcement apparatus; to quickly submit to the Government documents detailing the implementation of the laws and ordinances that have already come into effect.

- Ministries, sectors, and localities will review socio-economic development plans and schemes to identify targets and tasks for 2011 and the following years, thereof, to supplement and perfect the development schemes and plans for the period of 2011-2015; to focus on the preparations for the 1000^th birthday anniversary of Thăng Long-Hà Nội; to well organize the National Emulation Congress for 2006-2010; to continue administrative reforms, drastically boost the stage 3 of Project 30 on streamlining administrative procedures in all State management aspects; to attach importance to the settlement of complaints and accusations and anti-corruption; to actively prevent droughts and ensure enough water for the Summer-Autumn crop; and to be ready for preventing and combating natural calamities, floods, and plant-animal epidemics.

2. The Government listened to and commented upon the Project on the inventory and valuation of wholly State-owned enterprises’ property and capital, presented by the Minister of Finance.

The Ministry of Finance will take prime responsibility for collecting the Cabinet members’ comments to finalize the above-mentioned Project and submit it to the PM for approval.

3. The Government discussed the Bill on the admendment and supplement of some articles of the Law on Insurance Business and the Appeal Law, presented by the Minister of Finance, the Chief Inspector, and listened to the Minister-Chairman of the Office of Government to report on the Cabinet members’s ideas about the two bills.

- The Ministry of Finance is assigned, in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, the Office of Government and relevant agencies, to collect the Cabinet members’ comments to finalize the Bill on the admendment and supplement of some articles of the Law on Insurance Business; the Minister of Finance, authorized by the Government, will submit the Bill to the NA Standing Committee.

- The Government Inspectorate will take prime responsibility, in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, the Office of Government, and relevant agencies, to collect the Cabinet members’ opinions to finalize the Appeal Bill; the Chief Government Inspector, assigned by the PM, will submit the Bill to the NA Standing Committee.