Recently, in Da Nang, the Ministry of Planning and Investment organised the national conference on planning and investment. The conference focused on important issues such as building a draft of socio-economic development in 5 years (2016-2020); and a draft of the medium-term investment plan in 5 years (2016-2020).
Addressing the opening session of the conference, Minister of Planning and Investment Bui Quang Vinh said that it was 8 years since the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) held a national conference with the participation of leaders from many ministries and agencies concerned; leaders of political, social organisations, and chairmen of more 50 provinces and cities nationwide; leaders of corporations, state owned groups.
According to representatives, this meeting was held in the context of Vietnam achieving many encouraging results in many areas, but still facing many challenges. This is the right time for Vietnam’s policy-makers to sharply transform Vietnam’s growth model, political – economic-social development strategies in order to deal with the middle-income trap and to renew leadership methods, promoting economic restructuring to improve efficiency and competitiveness of the economy.
Minister Bui Quang Vinh stated that Vietnam this year could conclude the Trans-Pacific Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP) and other trade agreements. Therefore, the goal of reform and transformation of economic development pattern are even more important and should be taken into serious consideration. The National Assembly has recently ratified the Law on Investment. This is a significant step, making the planning and investment of the country in order. Shifting from the annual planning to the 5 - year plan will ensure a long-term investment, consistent with the socio-economic development strategies, ensuring the balance of economy; ensure openness, transparency and restrict the "asking-giving" situation in public investment, contributing to reducing negatives in public investment; overcome current dispersed investment status and slow project progress in comparison with the approval decision, contributing to improving the efficiency of public investment projects.
In terms of specific tasks, Minister Bui Quang Vinh said, this is a very essential time for deploying planning and investment, contributing to the successful implementation of the 5-year socio-economic development plan from 2016 to 2020. In addition, localities are producing political reports as well as 5-year plan in preparation for the Party Congress in 2015. Economic subcommittees, political subcommittees of the Central Committee is also actively implementing economic reports and political reports for the 12th National Party Congress, so this is the right time for Vietnam to deploy issues to be oriented to the 12th National Party Congress, and build the 5-year socio-economic development plan (2016-2020) and the medium-term investment plan, ensuring goals that the Party and State have identified for the next 5 years.
Besides, a new point in this national conference is that in the upcoming time, the General Statistics Office will calculate GDP growth rate in localities, not letting localities calculate themselves. This will remedy the situation in which localities have two-digit growth rate while as the national growth rate increased by only 5-6 percent / year.
At the meeting, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Van Trung also heightened the public awareness of fundamental principles in building the socio-economic development plan in the period of 2016-2020. Accordingly, the overall objective of the 5-year socioeconomic development plan is to maintain macroeconomic stability, control inflation, accelerate growth rate, ensure sustainable economic development, leading our country as a modern industrialized one in 2020. Vietnam also strives to increase the average GDP growth rate in the next five years to 6.5-7 percent/ year and decrease the average poverty rate by 1.5 percent/ year.
Furthermore, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Dao Quang Thu also clearly explained content of the directive to the Prime Minister on building medium-term investment plan during the period 2016 – 2020. Accordingly, the construction of medium-term investment plan is to ensure long-term investment and restrict the “asking-giving” mechanism in public investment. "Building a medium-term investment plan will help ministries, branches and localities proactively allocate resources, overcome dispersed investment, contributing to improve the efficiency of public investment", Mr Dao Quang Thu reaffirmed.
An important part of the Prime Directive states that Vietnam strives to clear all local outstanding debts of basic construction by the end of Dec 31, 2014. From 2015, the ministries and branches have to strictly obey provisions of the Public Investment Law, avoiding the increase of outstanding debts of basic construction. If there are violation since Jan 1, 2015, ministries, branches and localities will be punished in accordance with the provisions of the Public Investment Law. There needs to ensure funding for essential projects, not allocating funding for many programs; and Vietnam, in the period of 2016-2020, tries to successfully implement 2 national target programmes, namely Sustainable Poverty Reduction and New Rural Area Building.
Anh Phuong
Vietnamese
