Today, the National Assembly discussed the socio-economic situation.

Today (October 26), the National Assembly entered two days of discussion in the hall on the socio-economic situation in 2018, the 2019 plan and the mid-term assessment of the implementation of the 5-year plan 2016-2020.

According to the Government's report, of the 12 targets of the Socio-Economic Development Plan, it is expected that 4 targets will be achieved and 8 targets will exceed the set plan, with the GDP estimated to exceed the target by 6.7%. The major balances of the economy continue to be ensured, with the economic scale reaching over VND5.5 trillion (about USD240.5 billion). GDP per capita will reach USD2,540 by the end of this year, 1.21 times higher than in 2015.

Reviewing this report, the Economic Committee noted that the Government needs to clearly analyze the growth drivers and fully assess the factors affecting GDP growth because the growth in the last three quarters is different from the annual scenario. This was also a topic of interest to delegates at the group discussion session a few days ago.

Another concern also raised by the National Assembly's auditing agency is that government debt and national foreign debt are on the rise and approaching the ceiling allowed by the National Assembly.

The Government report stated that the public debt to GDP ratio has been decreasing in recent years, such as 62.6% of GDP in 2017; 61.4% of GDP in 2018 and expected to be around 61.3% of GDP in 2019. However, delegate Tran Hoang Ngan said that public debt (government debt, government-guaranteed debt and local government debt) has decreased, but government debt has increased, currently accounting for 52.8% of GDP while the ceiling is 54% of GDP. This means that the Government's annual principal repayment has increased.

Mr. Ngan calculated that in 2016, the principal debt payment was 150,700 billion VND; in 2017, it was over 157,000 billion VND and in 2019, it is expected to be about 201,210 billion VND. If added to the budget deficit of about 204,000 billion VND, then each year the Government must compensate about 350,000 billion VND, pushing the Government debt up in absolute terms.

"If GDP does not meet the plan and debt continues to increase, public debt will exceed the ceiling, but the worrying thing is the government's debt payments," Mr. Ngan emphasized.

Besides, the total state budget revenue exceeded the estimate, nearly 1.4 million billion VND, but there was a shortfall in revenue in three important economic sectors: state-owned enterprises, FDI and private sector.

The number of newly established enterprises increased, more than 130,000 enterprises as of the end of September 2018, but the number of bankruptcies also increased rapidly, more than 50% compared to the same period in 2017. Therefore, during the review process, the Economic Committee also requested the Government to analyze clearly to have a more general view of the current situation of enterprises.

The discussion will be broadcast live.