On October 22, in his 2012 report regarding the socioeconomic development before the National Assembly (NA), Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung emphasised, “In the face of numerous challenges, the socioeconomic achievement has conformed to the goals and targets set forth in the Party’s and NA’s resolution and exceeds the initial expectation in 10 out of 15 categories.”
The global economic turmoil and a slow growth rate have had significant impact on open and integrated economies like Vietnam’s. However, with the Government’s determination to stabilise the economy, inflation has been curbed to some extent; the macroeconomic condition is more stable; each quarter’s growth rate is higher than the previous one’s; social security is ascertained; foreign relations and global integration processes have attained notable milestones; national defence and security is strengthened; and the level of social security is heightened.
“Nevertheless, there are five unmet targets; there are still limitations on economic growth amidst a multitude of difficulties. Mid-term goals meant for macroeconomic stabilisation and sustainable development have just been implemented and potentially face many challenges,” said the Prime Minister.
According the Prime Minister, it is a challenge to achieve the set target from now until the year-end. “In order to achieve an annual 5.2 percent GDP growth rate, the fourth quarter’s rate has to be 6.5 percent (while the three quarter’s was 5.35 percent). This task requires the political system, government agencies and business community to be more proactive in resolving the remaining issues; support production to boost the growth rate; stabilise the economy and curb inflation,” the Prime Minister proposed. Regarding the Government’s execution of the 2012 socioeconomic goals, the NA Economic Committee quite frankly commented that “the Government’s report did not truly reflect the reality; many numbers differed greatly from the actual ones. The report also did not reflect the true extent of difficulty in people’s lives and the economy, especially that of businesses. The causes for these difficulties, according to the report, were inherently objective while in fact there were many subjective causes such as poor management and leadership. Five unmet targets as per the resolution are all important targets which determine the middle and long term stability of the economy.
According to Chairman Nguyen Van Giau of NA Economic Committee, though the growth rate is higher for the subsequent quarter, the annual growth rate is only 5-5.2 percent, lower than the set target per the resolution. In addition, the fact that the inflation rate slows down considerably, together with a plunge in import and surge in export turnover in the first nine months, lends evidence to a low intake rate and decrease in accumulated demand; two outstanding issues being bad debt and inventory are slowing down the resource flow in the economy.”
“The Government should instruct responsible ministries and departments to thoroughly re-evaluate the difficulties that many businesses, especially small and medium size enterprises, are facing and the impacts on growth rate and job market in the near future, from which implements necessary measures. From now until Tet holiday, the focus should be on freeing up inventory and handling bad debt. The Government should also review the accuracy and transparency of the true scale of bad debt, the potential bad debt and the debt restructuring process as well as unfinished projects whose deadline had been postponed in the past. Finally, there is an urgent need to improve the job market and people’ income,” said the Economic Committee Chairman Nguyen Van Giau
Dinh Thanh
Vietnamese
