Deploying 'painkillers' for the economy

Regarding specific solutions, the Prime Minister requested to maintain production and business activities in qualified places, encourage, facilitate and support businesses to implement "safe production, production must be safe", not to break the supply chain; ensure timely and smooth transportation and circulation of goods nationwide. Localities strictly implement the Prime Minister's direction in the spirit of ensuring safety regulations for epidemic prevention and control, not issuing separate regulations, and immediately abolishing inappropriate regulations...

Production and business lines in industrial parks of Nghe An. Photo: Archive

This message brings much hope to the business community, because since the situation of some localities lacking consistency in regulations on social distancing, input costs of businesses have increased dramatically, along with the risk of disruption in the supply chain of goods, production materials and severe labor shortages. The most difficult situation is for businesses operating in key export industries such as textiles, footwear, seafood, because they use a lot of labor and the production process involves many procedures and contacts.

In the past few weeks, these units have been unable to obtain travel permits to carry out import and export procedures, have not been able to test their workers in time, etc. Just the logistics costs and compliance with anti-epidemic measures have increased many times, not to mention the risk of being fined for late delivery. This difficult situation has been reflected in the general picture of the economy over the past eight months. That is, 85,500 businesses have temporarily left the market, an increase of 24.2% over the same period and far exceeding the number of newly established businesses.

The industrial production index decreased by 4.2% compared to the previous month and by 7.4% compared to the same period last year, with the sharpest decline in the processing and manufacturing industry, which is the driving force of growth. The trade balance shifted to a trade deficit of 3.71 billion USD while domestic consumption continued to decline sharply. Notably, the production index in August of some localities decreased sharply compared to the same period last year, with the highest decrease being 60.1%.

Therefore, since the outbreak of the fourth wave of Covid-19, the business community has continuously petitioned the Prime Minister to consider and supplement a number of solutions to exempt and reduce taxes, extend the time to defer payments, and promote the rapid, effective and transparent implementation of the support packages that have been issued. According to some economic experts, the current bottleneck is in localities, with some places issuing regulations to "block rivers and ban markets" in order to fight the epidemic, paralyzing the circulation chain.

To revive businesses in this particularly difficult time, we must not only wait for the budget to be balanced to launch financial and monetary policy support packages, but also start immediately with “pain relievers” for the economy. Public agencies must proactively adapt and have appropriate measures to the new situation, creating conditions for businesses to both prevent and fight the epidemic and maintain stable production and business, without incurring additional cost burdens.

Preventing and fighting Covid-19 is a comprehensive battle, including economic issues. Determining that the fight will be long-term means maintaining economic growth and people's livelihoods. We must seize every opportunity to try to maintain production and business, ensuring jobs for workers. Every business that has the opportunity to survive this difficult period is another opportunity to create momentum for the economy to recover and develop.