National Assembly passes resolution on socio-economic development plan 2015

On the afternoon of November 10, National Assembly deputies worked in the hall, voting to approve the draft Resolution on the 2015 socio-economic development plan and the Resolution on the 2015 state budget estimate.

The National Assembly voted to pass the Resolution on the State budget estimate for 2015. Photo: VNA

Striving for higher growth than 2014

With 89.54% of delegates voting in favor, the National Assembly passed the draft Resolution on the 2015 socio-economic development plan.

Accordingly, the general objectives are: Strengthening macroeconomic stability, focusing on removing difficulties for production and business activities. Strongly implementing strategic breakthroughs, restructuring the economy associated with transforming the growth model, improving efficiency and competitiveness, striving for higher growth than in 2014;

Continue to develop the social, cultural, educational, scientific, technological, environmental protection sectors, improve people's lives; Promote administrative reform, judicial reform, anti-corruption, practice thrift, combat waste; Strengthen national defense and security, firmly protect national sovereignty, ensure political security, social order and safety. Improve the effectiveness of foreign affairs, integration and international cooperation.

The resolution identifies key targets including: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increases by about 6.2%. Total export turnover increases by about 10%. The ratio of trade deficit to export turnover is about 5%. The consumer price index (CPI) growth rate is about 5%. Total social development investment capital is about 30%-32% of GDP. The poverty rate decreases by 1.7%-2%, with poor districts decreasing by 4%.

Creating jobs for about 1.6 million workers. The unemployment rate in urban areas is below 4%. The rate of trained workers is 50%. The rate of malnourished children under 5 years old has decreased to below 15%. The number of hospital beds per 10,000 people (excluding commune health station beds) is 23.5 beds.

The rate of establishments causing serious environmental pollution that are handled is 90%. The rate of industrial parks and export processing zones in operation with centralized wastewater treatment systems that meet environmental standards is 82%. The forest coverage rate is 42%.

Assign the Government to review, calculate and develop a system of economic, social and environmental indicators according to the 5-year and annual Plans that are scientific, quantitative and appropriate, report to the National Assembly for consideration at the 10th Session and apply from the 2016 Plan.

The National Assembly basically agreed with the tasks and solutions submitted by the Government, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuracy and the National Assembly agencies' recommendations in the inspection reports and thematic supervision reports. At the same time, the National Assembly requested to focus on implementing the main tasks and solutions: Resolutely and effectively implementing strategic breakthroughs, restructuring the economy associated with transforming the growth model, improving the quality, efficiency and competitiveness of products, enterprises and the economy.

Focus on completing the tasks of restructuring and equitization plan of state-owned enterprises according to the approved project. Review and supplement policies to restructure the agricultural sector, increase added value, competitiveness of Vietnamese agricultural products and increase investment in agriculture and rural areas. Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of state management; continue to review the organization and staffing in conjunction with the requirement to eliminate overlapping functions and tasks; strongly reform administrative procedures, especially procedures for investment, construction, land, tax, customs and bank credit.

Focus on accelerating the progress of bad debt settlement in conjunction with restructuring credit institutions towards early completion of the legal framework for the debt trading market, strengthening inspection and supervision of bad debt, credit quality and implementation of legal regulations on debt classification and risk provisioning. Strive to bring the bad debt ratio below 3% by the end of 2015.

Continue to ensure social security policies; ensure the roadmap for increasing the minimum wage according to the provisions of the Labor Code for the production and business sectors. Continue to synchronously implement measures to reduce overload in central and lower-level hospitals, improve the quality of medical examination and treatment, especially in provincial and district-level medical facilities. Prioritize funding for urgent projects, stabilize the population and create more favorable livelihoods for people...

Approval of Resolution on State budget estimate for 2015

The draft Resolution on the 2015 state budget estimate was passed with 88.13% of National Assembly deputies voting in favor.

The Resolution clearly states: Approval of the 2015 state budget estimate: Total state budget revenue is 911,100 billion VND (nine hundred and eleven thousand, one hundred billion VND); if including 10,000 billion VND of revenue transferred from 2014 to 2015, the total state budget revenue is 921,100 billion VND (nine hundred and twenty-one thousand, one hundred billion VND); Total state budget expenditure is 1,147,100 billion VND (one million, one hundred and forty-seven thousand, one hundred billion VND); The state budget deficit is 226,000 billion VND (two hundred and twenty-six thousand billion VND), equivalent to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP).

The Resolution clearly states that the Government is assigned to: Implement a strict fiscal policy; allocate state budget expenditures in a concentrated manner, combat dispersion, waste, and loss; manage and use them economically and effectively; Improve the quality of inspection, examination, and auditing work, strengthen financial and budgetary discipline; Guide the implementation of state budget estimates in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and laws; state budget revenues and expenditures must be estimated and prescribed by law; Promote measures to combat smuggling, trade fraud, transfer pricing, and tax evasion; promptly recover revenues detected through inspection, examination, and auditing; reduce tax arrears.

The resolution also clearly states that no new policies that reduce state budget revenue will be proposed or issued, except for tax cuts to implement international commitments. Continue to collect into the state budget dividends distributed in 2015 for the state capital portion of joint stock companies with state capital contributed by ministries, branches and localities as owners and the remaining profits after setting aside funds according to the law at corporations and general companies with 100% state capital.

Continue to collect into the state budget 75% of the oil and gas profits shared by the host country and the document reading fees arising in 2015; the remaining amount (25%) is left for the Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group to invest in accordance with the law. Manage state budget expenditures according to the assigned estimates.

Do not allow advances to the next year's state budget; in special cases, the Government shall report to the National Assembly Standing Committee for consideration and decision. Review and strictly manage to drastically reduce the amount of transferred expenditures, only transfer funds for some expenditures that are still in need and are truly necessary in accordance with the provisions of law.

Continue to thoroughly implement savings in regular expenses, do not buy public vehicles (except specialized vehicles as prescribed by law); minimize expenses for celebrations, conferences, seminars, festivals, groundbreaking, commencement, inauguration of projects and overseas business trips.

Organize Party congresses at all levels in the spirit of thorough thrift. Strictly implement the Law on Practicing Thrift and Combating Wastefulness. Implement an 8% increase in pensions, preferential allowances for meritorious people and salaries for low-income civil servants, public employees and armed forces (salary coefficient of 2.34 or less). Implementation date from January 1, 2015.

Allocation and management of development investment expenditure from the state budget must comply with the provisions of the Law on Public Investment. Prioritize capital allocation to pay off state budget debts and recover advances. Do not allocate capital for new projects that are not urgent.

In case the ODA capital disbursement exceeds the estimate, the Government must report to the National Assembly Standing Committee before implementation; promote public-private partnership (PPP) and investment forms that do not use state capital to mobilize maximum investment resources for socio-economic development. Review the objectives of 16 national target programs to focus on allocating budget capital for important and urgent objectives, and complete them in 2015.

Summarize and evaluate the results of implementing national target programs deployed in the 2011-2015 period; conduct a comprehensive review to reduce, integrate, and reduce national target programs in the 2016-2020 period; report to the National Assembly at the 10th Session.

Strictly control the state budget deficit; in state budget management, take active measures to reduce the deficit and increase debt repayment. Use the increased state budget revenue in 2014 mainly to prioritize debt repayment of budget levels, and make some expenditures according to the provisions of the State Budget Law. Calculate correctly and fully public debt, not to exceed the ceiling according to the National Assembly Resolution (65% of GDP), strictly manage public debt, especially loans guaranteed by the Government and loans for re-lending.

Improve the efficiency of loan capital use, strictly manage the debt repayment accumulation fund. Continue measures to restructure loans. From 2015, issue government bonds with terms of 5 years or more, do not make short-term loans to offset the state budget deficit, reduce the level of debt restructuring loans.

During the remaining time of the working session in the hall, this afternoon, November 10, of the 8th session of the 13th National Assembly, National Assembly deputies discussed a number of contents with different opinions of the draft Law on Enterprises (amended).

Regarding the application of the Enterprise Law and specialized laws (Article 3), delegate Vu Tien Loc (Thai Binh) said that the draft Enterprise Law still stipulates: "In cases where specialized laws have specific provisions on the organization, management, reorganization, dissolution and related activities of enterprises, the provisions of that Law shall apply."

While the Investment Law stipulates: in case there are different provisions between this law and other laws on prohibited investment and business sectors and business lines, conditional investment and business sectors, the provisions of this law shall apply, except for the Securities Law, the Law on Credit Institutions, the Law on Insurance Business, and the Law on Petroleum.

According to the delegate, such a provision in both cases is unreasonable. The delegate analyzed the case of the Investment Law which must be placed on a level to affirm that all matters related to corporate governance activities must be given priority in applying the Enterprise Law.

Exceptions are accepted within the legal framework of specialized fields such as securities, insurance, oil and gas, only exceptions are needed in the organizational model, corporate governance, etc.

National Assembly delegate of Thai Binh province Vu Tien Loc speaks at the discussion on the draft Law on Enterprises (amended). Photo: VNA

Delegate Vu Tien Loc proposed to amend the content of Article 3 of the draft Law on Enterprises (amended) in the direction of giving priority to the application of enterprise law over specialized laws, except for exceptional cases and only applicable to securities laws, credit institutions, insurance business and petroleum, not all other specialized laws....

On this issue, the Standing Committee of the National Assembly has the view that the Enterprise Law stipulates legal principles on the establishment, management organization, reorganization, dissolution and related activities of enterprises, which are applied generally to all types of enterprises.

However, due to the specific nature of businesses in certain fields, some specialized laws need to have separate regulations specifically applied to that specific field.

Delegate Le Dac Lam (Binh Thuan) commented that the current law still overlaps with specialized laws in granting registration certificates and establishment licenses, but based on the scope of regulation of this draft law, enterprises should be registered and granted establishment licenses according to the provisions of the Enterprise Law; for specific fields, after being granted an establishment license, they must apply for a business license if they meet the operating conditions determined according to the standards prescribed in specialized laws.

According to the delegate, this regulation is also implemented in many fields such as tobacco, transportation, gasoline, beer, alcohol, etc.

Therefore, the provision as in Article 3 of the draft Law: "In case a specialized law has specific provisions on the organization, management, reorganization, dissolution and related activities of enterprises, the provisions of that Law shall apply" will both facilitate the management agency and create favorable conditions for enterprises when registering or amending business lines.

Discussing the criteria, rights and obligations of social enterprises, delegate Le Dac Lam assessed that Article 10 alone regulating social enterprises would not be sufficient criteria and legal status for these enterprises to operate.

According to delegates, the draft law should add the concept of social enterprises, add it into a separate chapter to regulate criteria and issues related to other enterprises, to avoid the situation where the law comes into effect but is still not applicable.

Regarding this issue, the National Assembly Standing Committee believes that the provisions in the draft Law on Enterprises (amended) are mainly legal principles on social enterprises such as regulations on criteria, rights, and obligations of social enterprises and assign the Government to provide detailed regulations.

At the discussion session, National Assembly deputies gave their opinions on business sectors, occupations and conditions; criteria, rights and obligations of social enterprises; legal representatives of enterprises; contents of the Enterprise Registration Certificate and regulations on enterprise registration.

According to Vietnam+