The Government's regular meeting – October 2009

RESOLUTION

The Government's regular meeting – October 2009

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On October 29-30, 2009, the Government convened its regular meeting of October to discuss and decide the following issues:

1. The Government reviewed and adopted reports on: Socio-economic performance in the first ten months of 2009, domestic and global economic forecast in the coming time; results of the implementation of the Government’s policies on economic stimulus and social security and policy proposals for the time to come; development of tertiary education and solutions to better training quality; results of the one-year enforcement of the Resolution adopted by the 7^th Plenum of the 10^th Party Central Committee on agriculture, peasantry and rural development; the National Goal Program on rural development in the period of 2010-2020; Inspection, settlement of accusations and complaints, and anti-corruption in October; Administrative reforms in October; the realization of the Government’s September meeting resolution; and the Government’s October working program  Those reports were presented by Ministers of Planning and Investment, Education and Training, Agriculture and Rural Development, Home Affairs, Government General Inspector; and Minister-Chairman of the Office of Government.

a) For socio-economic situation in the reviewed period and the results of the implementation of the Government’s policies on economic stimulus and social security, the Government judged: Despite direct impacts of the global financial crisis and economic downturn, positive socio-economic achievements were gained thanks to the Party and State’s sound leadership, the drastic, proper and effective instructions of authorities at all levels, and the aggregate efforts of the whole political system, business community and people. Economic downturn was curbed; economic growth rate climbed up on a quarter-by-quarter basis; industrial production significantly rebounced and continuously grew over the past nine consecutive months; agricultural production increased stably; service sector, especially in the local market got a relatively quick growth pace; the society’s total investment capital considerably rose; macro-economic stability was sustained, consumer price index increase was reined in, social security continued to be ensured, employment and living hardships have been easing; admimistrative reform, settlement of accusations and complaints and the fight against corruption saw progresses; socio-political stability, social order and national security-defense were secured; people’s confidence in the Party’s leadership and guidelines, State’s management and the Goverrnment’s instruction was improved.

Beside the above positive sides, the national economy still faced challenges: slow recovery in investment, production, export, and tourism; unstable macro-economic balance; severe natural disasters causing great losses to people; and low living-standard of a large part of population, etc.

The Government was unanimous in continuing to enforce its solutions and policies in the rest of 2009 to recover a higher and firm growth rate in 2010 than that of 2009; maintain macro-economic stability and control inflation. Economic stimulating policies must be closely attached to economic restructuring towards higher productivity, quality, efficiency and competitiveness of the national economy while ensuring social security as well. Based on that stance, the following solutions should be deployed drastically:

- The Ministry of Planning and Investment, in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and relevant agencies, will (i) calculate and balance the volume of total social investment capital for 2010 as submitted to the National Assembly, especially sources from State budget and governmental bonds for socio-economic infrastructure development so as to facilitate the mobilization of foreign and domestic capital; and (ii) put forward solutions to manage and use capital sources effectively, reduce the dispersion of capital.

- The State Bank of Việt Nam and the Ministry of Industry and Trade, upon their competence and in collaboration with relevant ministries, agencies and localities, will consider the continuation of policies on interest rate incentives, stipulated in the PM’s Decision 443/QĐ-TTg dated on April 4, 2009, Decision 497/QĐ-TTg dated on April 17, 2009 and Decision 131/QĐ-TTg dated on January 23, 2009 in favor of growth recovery, economic restructuring, macro-economic stability, and proper reduction of assistance scope; then submit final policies to the Government for approval and issuance in December this year.

- The State Bank of Việt Nam, in collaboration with relevant agencies, will continue monetary and exchange rate policies actively, flexibly and cautiously on the basis of market rules, keeping the growth of the total means of payment and credit at reasonable rates, controlling trade deficit, reining in the recurrence of high inflation for the macro-economic stability; cooperate with relevant ministries and sectors to design and submit to the Government for promulgation, in the fourth quarter of 2009, of a Decree on credit for agricultural and rural development, curtailing procedures to facilitate in favor of rural households, farm-owners and collectives to access to loans.

- The Ministry of Industry and Trade, in collaboration with relevant agencies, will remove obstacles in procedures lending loans of interest rate incentives under the PM’s Decision 497/QĐ-TTg dated on April 17, 2009 and give instructions on some regulations of the Decision in line with the real situation.

- The Ministry of Finance will propose solutions to (i) reduce State budget over-spending in 2010 in the directions of increasing budget collection, lessening loss of revenue, saving money without slashing budget spending on socio-economic development tasks that were ratified earlier; (ii) eliminate in 2010 policies on tax exemption and reduction being carried out in 2009; (iii) continue to delay in the first quarter of 2010 the payment of corporate revenue tax for small and medium-sized enterprises, enterprises operating in garment, footwear and leather or those employing a large number of laborers; (iv) suggest the PM amend the credit guaranteeing mechanism in conformity with the PM’s Decision 14/2009/QĐ-TTg, dated on January 21, 2009 on guaranteeing long-term credit loans for small and medium-sized enterprises.

- The Government Inspectorate, in collaboration with ministries, sectors and localities, will enhance inspection, solving accusations and complaints, promoting anti-corruption in line with the Government’s adopted program.

- Ministries, sectors, and localities must continue to direct the active implementation of the Government’s economic stimulus solutions and policies; provide sufficient capital to and secure schedule and quality of projects, particularly those on infrastructure, transport, irrigation, social housing, and poverty reduction; continue the adopted solutions and policies on social security, and discover new issues and propose solutions to the PM for consideration; quickly design specific projects on realizing socio-economic development plans, missions and targets for 2010, suggest solutions to be implemented right from the beginning of 2010; concentrate on reviewing and streamlining administrative procedures in line with the Project 30 in 2010; arrange delegations to go abroad in a proper and effective way; curb expenses and reduce ceremonial activities and conferences.

b) Over the past time, our tertiary education system has been expanding in terms of scope, with various kinds of training facilities. More public resources have been mobilized, which help to bring about positive results, including nurturing highly-qualified workforce to serve socio-economic development, national defense-security and international economic integration. However, tertiary education still contains shortcomings: State management over universities and colleges is so slowly renewed that not improve the standard of the whole education system, nor make full use of creativeness of lecturers, managers and students; quality of human resource is now a weak point so that requirements of the country’s socio-economic development are not met.

The Ministry of Education and Training, in collaboration with relevant agencies, will collect the Cabinet members’ comments and supplement measures to consolidate and enhance efficiency of State management over tertiary education, finanlize the report on tertiary education development as well as solutions to raise quality.

c) Rural development is a long-term process that needs the involvement of the Party, people and business community. It requires the high consensus, great efforts and high determination of the whole political system. To realize the resolutions of the 10^th Party Congress, particularly the resolution of the 10^th Central Party Committee’s 7^th Plenum on agriculture, peasantry and rural development, the Government instructed ministries and sectors to drastically deploy many programs, projects and measures for comprehensive agricultural and rural development; increase efforts to reduce poverty; further better material and spriritual living standards of rural residents; and maintain socio-political stability. However, some plans, programs, mechanisms, policies and ministerial instructions in the implementation of the Government’s Action Program to realize the Party Central Committee’s Resolution 26-NQ/TW have been slowly designed; many new programs and projects just helped to address some urgent issues in certain fields. There has not been a comprehensive master plan on rural development to create socio-economic breakthroughs in rural areas nationwide.

The Government asks ministries and sectors to tighten supervision over the on-schedule implementation of the projects set out in the Governent’s Action Program to realize Resolution 26-NQ/TW; allocate resources for urgent programs and projects, especially the National Goal Program on Rural Development and the Vocational Training Program for Farmers. Localities will report their one-year implementation of Resolution 26-NQ/TW and propose new plans and solutions based on their own experience of rural development, then piloting the new model of rural development at village and commune levels. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will acquire the Cabenit members’ comments and finalize the Draft National Goal Program on rural development, then submitting to to the PM for consideration.

2. The Government listened to the Minister-Chairman of the Office of Government to present a report summing up the Cabinet members’ comments on the competence of the Chief Inspectors of the Directorate of Vocational Training and the General Department for Environment in imposing administrative penalties.

The Ministry of Labor-War Invalids and Social Affairs, in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, Government Inspectorate, Office of Government and relevant agencies, will collect the Cabinet members’ ideas on the competence for imposing administrative penalties by the Chief Inspector of the Directorate of Vocational Training, perfect the Draft Decree on administrative penalty in the vocational training and submit it to the PM for signing and issuance.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, Government Inspectorate, Office of Government and relevant agencies, will gather ideas of the Cabinet members on the competence in executing administrative penalties by the Chief Inspector of the General Department for Environment, perfect the Draft Decree on administrative penalty in the field of environment protection, then submit it to the PM for signing and issuance./.