3:26:38 PM | 7/8/2005
Hung expressed optimism while talking with local media on the sidelines of the on-going session of the National Assembly in
He, however, called on the State to take a series of drastic and coordinated measures to achieve this target. He suggested cutting fees required for production input, and managing effectively the distribution and circulation of sensitive commodities, such as petroleum products and cement.
The Finance Minister also stressed that the State needs to employ macro-economic measures, including readjusting banking interest rates, to help keep inflation at the set level.
He said that the prices of some products, including oil and gas, steel and iron, cement, and fertilizer, have greatly impacted on the entire production process.
In particular, petroleum price increases constitute only 5-7% of the price index increase in terms of value, but some sectors have taken advantage of such price increases to raise the prices of their products and services, he said.
He especially emphasized the need to control transport costs.
Many experts, however, have recently voiced their concern that at this pace of soaring CPI, the inflation rate of the whole year could climb to over 7%.
Some of them also blamed forecast about the rise of the CPI for pushing the real index to even higher levels.
Last month, the CPI rose 4.3% compared to the end of 2004. All the ten groups of commodities used in calculating CPI posted a growth in prices. Among them, Food and foodstuff posted the highest growth in prices, at 6.6%; followed by beverages and cigarettes, up 2.5%; transport and postal services, up 2.3%; and housing and construction materials, up 2.2%.
People’s Army, Labour
Vietnamese
