PM Nguyễn Tấn Dũng at the Government regular meeting - Photo: VNGOP

After praising great efforts of ministries and local authorities in realizing the Government’s action program, PM Nguyễn Tấn Dũng pointed out that, despite some high socio-economic development norms, the consumer price index (CPI) increased sharply in February and the first two months of 2008. According to him, this was mainly resulted from fluctuations of the world economy. He also acknowledged that the Government’s monetary policies were not really effective and adaptable to complicated changes of the world market.

The PM proposed the following tasks to be fruitfully conducted in March and the time to come:

First, to tighten macro-economic and price control; to apply monetary, exchange rate and interest rate policies in a tight, flexible and active way; to take consistent measures to stabilize the stock market; and to maintain the balance of primary goods;

Second, to promote industrial and agricultural production and services; to expand domestic and foreign markets. “No better solution to reduce trade gap than boosting export,” said PM Dũng.

Third, to speed up the disbursement of investments for capital construction, especially Governmental bonds for works of transport and irrigations, schools, hospitals; to lift more administrative barriers to attract investors;

Fourth, to focus on poverty reduction;

Fifth, to further administrative reforms in all fields through the “one-stop shop” mechanism and IT application in order to create a good business environment.

The Cabinet also had discussions on the Bill to revise some articles of the Petroleum Law, Bill on Vietnamese Army Officers, Bill on Value Added Tax (amended), and the Bill on Enterprise Income Tax (revised).

By Hồng Uyên