Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh: Connecting expressways to reach the Central Highlands fastest

Continuing the 7th session, on the afternoon of May 25, the National Assembly continued to discuss in the hall the Report of the Supervisory Delegation and the draft Resolution of the National Assembly on the results of the thematic supervision of "the implementation of Resolution No. 43/2022/QH15 dated January 11, 2022 of the National Assembly on fiscal and monetary policies to support the Socio-economic Recovery and Development Program and the resolutions of the National Assembly on a number of important national projects until the end of 2023".

Next, the National Assembly discussed in groups the investment policy for the project to build the North-South Expressway in the West, Gia Nghia (Dak Nong) - Chon Thanh (Binh Phuoc) section and adjusted the investment policy for the National Target Program on socio-economic development in ethnic minority and mountainous areas for the 2021-2030 period.

Speaking at the group discussion, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh first spent time analyzing Vietnam's outstanding achievements in nearly 40 years of renovation; the country's fundamental factors and development guidelines, policies on foreign affairs, economy, national defense, culture, ensuring progress, social justice, social security, Party and political system building, and anti-corruption and negativity.

According to the Prime Minister, up to now, we have basically formed a theoretical system on socialism and the path to socialism in Vietnam, with three pillars: Building socialist democracy; building a socialist rule-of-law state; building a socialist-oriented market economy. Along with that, implementing three strategic breakthroughs in institutions, infrastructure and human resources.

The consistent principle is: Taking people as the center, the subject, the goal, the driving force, and the main resource of development; not sacrificing progress and fairness, social security and the environment to pursue mere economic growth.

Reviewing important milestones in the struggle for national liberation, national reunification and the building and protection of the socialist Fatherland of Vietnam, the Prime Minister stated that after nearly 40 years of renovation, from a poor, backward country that suffered the most pain and loss after World War II, we have achieved great achievements of historical significance. Our country has never had such a foundation, potential, position and international prestige as it does today.

However, our country still faces difficulties and challenges due to a long period of war devastation. It is a developing country with a transitional economy, modest in scale, low starting point, limited internal capacity, low resilience and competitiveness, and large openness, so it is subject to many impacts and influences from external factors.

According to the Prime Minister, our country and people are under more pressure, making more efforts; the more difficult it is, the smarter it is. To achieve the set goals, it requires clear thinking, high determination, great efforts, decisive and effective actions, identifying the core and key points, not spreading out, and finishing each task. The viewpoint is that resources originate from thinking, motivation originates from innovation, and strength originates from the people.

Choose the best option, get the results and overall efficiency to evaluate.

Next, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh spent a lot of time analyzing the implementation of Resolution No. 43/2022/QH15 of the National Assembly on fiscal and monetary policies to support the Socio-Economic Recovery and Development Program.

According to the Prime Minister, delegates basically assessed the program as correct, accurate, and timely, although this is an unprecedented task. The program includes four major components: (1) investment in improving healthcare capacity, disease prevention and control; (2) ensuring social security and supporting employment; (3) supporting the recovery of enterprises, cooperatives, and business households; (4) investment in infrastructure development.

The Prime Minister said that all four contents of the program have been basically done well. For example, regarding social security, the whole country has supported more than 100 trillion VND for over 67 million people facing difficulties due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Regarding infrastructure investment, the whole country is currently like a construction site implementing key, important national transport infrastructure projects in 45 provinces and cities, including projects from the recovery and development program. Investing in infrastructure development will help create new development space, but it takes a relatively long time to evaluate the effectiveness.

Investment in improving medical capacity has also been done well, despite difficulties and obstacles due to procedures and regulations.

Regarding the content of support for businesses, the Prime Minister assessed that it was done well, but the interest rate support (2%/year) with a maximum scale of 40,000 billion VND was not done well.

Analyzing the causes, the Prime Minister said that the approach of the interest rate support policy is not suitable, not correct - not in line with reality. Instead of a more suitable approach of borrowing - paying, borrowing must be paid, if able to pay then lend; this support requires the resilience of enterprises. Changing the status but not changing the policy mechanism is not possible.

However, although the full VND40,000 billion in interest rate support was not used, many other policies were well implemented, such as the reduction of value added tax (VAT) in 2 years up to nearly VND200,000 billion.

Therefore, the Prime Minister said that we must look at the overall picture to evaluate the implementation of Resolution 43 of the National Assembly, and at the same time acknowledge the comments of National Assembly deputies to contribute to perfecting the policy to do better, including possibly transferring this package to the Social Policy Bank to support other goals....

Similarly, with national target programs, the Prime Minister affirmed that the policy is completely correct to achieve progress and social justice, but when implementing, there are contents that have not been fully calculated, it is necessary to learn from experience while implementing, if the policy is not suitable, propose to the National Assembly to amend and supplement.

According to the Prime Minister, every policy has many impacts, but it is necessary to choose the most optimal option, taking the results and overall effectiveness to evaluate. For example, normally countries have to choose between growth and inflation, to control inflation, they have to sacrifice growth. But we are currently promoting growth, controlling inflation, stabilizing the macro economy, ensuring major balances, but growth must be higher than inflation, if growth is lower than inflation, people's lives will be difficult.

In recent times, in the context of the prolonged consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the international situation evolving rapidly, complicatedly, unpredictably, conflicts in many places lasting for a long time, causing disruptions in production chains, supply chains, etc., reality shows that we are on the right track, basically achieving all the major goals set, including controlling inflation, stabilizing the macro-economy, ensuring major balances, public debt, government debt, national foreign debt and state budget deficit are well controlled, much lower than the prescribed limits, average income per capita, and the material and spiritual life of the people are improved.

"The decisions of the National Assembly are correct and timely. We have done well, but there are also things that are not good according to the law of development," Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said, adding that pointing out shortcomings will help us recognize and learn from experience to do better. When similar incidents or situations arise, we will be bold and confident in deciding to act.

"The results achieved show us the efforts of our people, under the leadership of the Party. From this great whole, we have new spirit, new motivation, new confidence to move forward, create new victories, continue to implement the goals of the 13th National Congress, enter the 14th National Congress with a new mindset, build our country more decent, more beautiful, and achieve the goals set for 2030 and 2045," the Prime Minister said.

In the coming time, the Prime Minister suggested continuing to focus strongly on strategic breakthroughs, including building and perfecting institutions, promoting investment in infrastructure development and human resource training.

Since the beginning of the term, the National Assembly and the Government have been very active in removing difficulties and institutional obstacles, but many problems remain. This is also a reason why a number of officials avoid and fear responsibility. The Prime Minister emphasized the need to promote decentralization and delegation of power along with appropriate resource allocation, improve enforcement capacity and strengthen inspection, supervision and control of power.

Connecting highways to reach the Central Highlands fastest

Regarding expressways, the Prime Minister said that in the past, we have not done much and have not been able to arrange much capital to invest in expressways. Currently, our country is simultaneously deploying a series of expressways from the North-South axis and the East-West axis in all regions.

The Prime Minister said that in the process of building expressways, we should learn from experience as we go, gradually expand, and remove difficulties and obstacles.

In particular, the Prime Minister emphasized the importance of proposing a policy mechanism related to separating the site clearance stage into a separate project, licensing common raw material mines for projects. Along with that, it is necessary to amend the Bidding Law, preventing the situation of "blue team, red team"...

According to the Prime Minister, once the site is available, we will focus on implementing the project with the spirit of "only working, not backtracking", "beating the sun, beating the rain", "eating and sleeping quickly", working in "3 shifts", working on holidays, during Tet... then the progress of the projects will be guaranteed, even ahead of schedule. For example, My Thuan 2 bridge, which we built ourselves, although the bridge is longer, bigger, higher, wider, and more beautiful, it is cheaper and takes less time than My Thuan 1 bridge (mainly from foreign loans).

Regarding raw material mines, a delegate said that "land mines are treated like gold mines" in terms of procedures, causing difficulties and problems.

The Prime Minister also emphasized the issue of human resources and implementation organization. The reality of many units, projects and works shows that instead of having to do a lot of work, just replacing a few people in the leadership apparatus will change the situation of the unit and the implementation of projects and works in a positive direction.

Hoping that the National Assembly will support the implementation of the Gia Nghia - Chon Thanh expressway, the Prime Minister stated that this is a very strategic road, and agencies have carefully studied the connection of expressways to reach the Central Highlands as quickly as possible.

In order to connect the Central Highlands with the South Central Coast, the Khanh Hoa - Buon Ma Thuot (Dak Lak) route is under construction, the Quy Nhon (Binh Dinh) - Pleiku (Gia Lai) route is being researched and implemented; and the Gia Nghia - Chon Thanh route is the most convenient route to go from the Central Highlands to the Southeast.

Taking note of the National Assembly delegates’ opinions, the Prime Minister said the general guideline for expressway projects is that the route needs to be as straight and short as possible and avoid residential areas, not following old roads. This helps reduce site clearance, costs, time and creates new development space.

According to the Prime Minister, this is the most effective overall, but this can also have certain impacts and disadvantages such as causing separation of residential areas. We have appropriate solutions to overcome this, such as building overpasses for people, intersections... and can also study the merger of administrative units as proposed by delegates.