Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc: Do not be complacent and intoxicated with 7.46% growth

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc requested ministries and branches not to be subjective but to resolutely implement solutions in the fourth quarter to achieve the annual growth target of 6.7%.

On the morning of October 3, at the Government Headquarters, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc chaired the regular Government meeting for September. Although the socio-economic results for the first 9 months were positive, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc requested ministries and branches not to be complacent but to resolutely implement solutions to achieve the growth target of 6.7% for the whole year.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc speaks at the meeting.

Assessing the socio-economic situation, the Prime Minister said that in the third quarter, the country's economy grew dramatically by 7.46%, mainly in the service production sector; agriculture, especially high-tech agriculture with high agricultural export levels; processing and manufacturing industry; services, retail and tourism.

The Prime Minister said that at this rate, if no major natural disasters occur, along with overcoming subjective thinking in leadership and management and overcoming some shortcomings and inadequacies, this year will be the first year in many years that the Government has comprehensively exceeded all 13 targets assigned by the Party Central Committee and the National Assembly. And importantly, growth comes from the driving force of service production development, not growth from credit or mining.

Another good news is that the World Economic Forum has just assessed that Vietnam's competitiveness has increased by 5 levels. Compared to 5 years ago, this index of Vietnam has increased by 50 levels. The Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) just announced by Nikkei of Vietnam reached 53 points, the highest in ASEAN. The business atmosphere of people and businesses is very vibrant.

With the current export growth rate, the Prime Minister asked ministries and sectors to promote exports, striving for a growth of 20-21%, 3 times higher than the plan. Of which, agriculture is likely to achieve an export result of 35 billion USD.

Looking back at three-quarters of 2017, the Prime Minister said that the Government has directly directed the removal of difficulties for people and businesses, in which up to now, ministries and branches have cut over 5,000 administrative procedures.

The good news is that the macro economy continues to be stable; inflation is low, with an average increase of 3.79% in the first 9 months. The major balances of the economy have been maintained, especially the budget revenue which increased by nearly 14%; the stock market surpassed 800 points, the highest since 2008.

Meanwhile, FDI attraction reached nearly 26 billion USD, an increase of over 34%. Realized capital was 12.5 billion USD. The whole country had nearly 94,000 newly established enterprises, with favorable production and business conditions. Market and social confidence in the leadership of the Party and management of the State increased.

Despite such encouraging results, in order to successfully complete the 2017 tasks, the Prime Minister directed the Ministries and branches not to be subjective, especially in the face of weather and climate abnormalities that may occur in the fourth quarter. Instead, they must focus on drastically managing the tasks and solutions to complete the set goals.

According to the Prime Minister, if we continue to be intoxicated with the results achieved recently and forget the heavy tasks in the fourth quarter, there is still a possibility that the plan will not be completed, especially GDP growth. 9 months reaching 6.41% is higher than the same period, but if we want the whole year to reach 6.7%, the fourth quarter must reach 7.4 - 7.5%.

“The numbers are not easy, all sectors and fields must review. In particular, the responsible sectors must find out the limitations and weaknesses; key localities must find specific solutions to continue growth” – the Prime Minister emphasized.

Accordingly, the Prime Minister pointed out the shortcomings and weaknesses that ministries and branches must focus on handling. First is the industrial sector. Although the manufacturing and processing sector has increased sharply, the construction industry sector has still grown lower than the same period last year. Another problem is that the disbursement of public investment capital is still slow, with only nearly 55% disbursed so far.

“We are talking about a lack of capital, but the economy has capital but disbursement is not easy. Is this something we need to pay attention to in order to contribute to growth? The construction investment sectors must find ways to disburse all of the capital of over 307,000 billion VND planned for 2017” – said the Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc agreed that any locality or sector that cannot do it must resolutely cut back according to regulations to use for other urgent matters. This sanction requires localities and sectors to focus, and cannot be said to be able to disburse funds if they want or not. The economy is thirsty for capital, if money is given to sectors and localities that cannot implement it, it must be transferred.

The Prime Minister also pointed out the "stagnant" situation in equitization and divestment of state-owned enterprises after 9 months, when so far only 18/44 enterprises have been equitized; only 11,800 out of 60,000 billion VND have been divested.

Regarding the production and business situation, in the past 9 months, 94,000 new enterprises were established, and 21,000 enterprises returned to production, but the Prime Minister noted that the number of enterprises completing procedures for dissolution was up to 8,700. Therefore, the Prime Minister asked ministries and branches to discuss solutions to promote production and export.

The Prime Minister also asked Government members to discuss preparations for the upcoming 4th session of the National Assembly, including reports, documents, and draft laws that the Government must urgently complete to submit at the session.

At the meeting, the Government listened to and discussed the draft Resolution on transforming the sustainable development model of the Mekong Delta to adapt to climate change; the draft Law on amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Public Investment; the report on the arrangement of commune-level officials to monitor food safety work; the Report on the issuance of a Decision amending and supplementing policies for prestigious people in ethnic minority areas; the Government's report to the National Assembly on the feasibility study report on the project of land acquisition, compensation, support and resettlement of Long Thanh International Airport./.

According to VOV