At the regular press meeting held yesterday, permanent deputy prime minister Nguyen Sinh Hung committed the government's determination in curbing inflation and re-confirming growth figure.
Opening the meeting, Cao Viet Sinh, vice minister of Investment and Planning reported that although petroleum prices were increased in the first quarter, March CPI only rose by 2.99% month on month and the export growth in Q1 was 23%.
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| Deputy prime minister Nguyen Sinh Hung |
However, the macro economy still showed bad currencies such as import spending be higher 2.7 times than export turnover. The number of pupils leaving school is increasing sharply. Given assessment on the difficult situation, he said, apart from objective factors including an increase in the global prices and US economic depression, also internal weakness exits in Vietnamese economy, especially limitations in managing land and real estate investment.
Regarding further measures, the Ministry of Investment and Planning announced it would expand items of expenditure or cut unnecessary items of expenditure, not to supplement items out of estimation excluding urgent cases. At the same time, they would enhance supervision over state enterprises particularly groups and corporations 90, 91 to surmount the wide spreading investments, check over inefficient investment works to report to the government by the middle of April.
However, the deputy prime minister also said that there appeared optimistic signals for Vietnamese economy. In Q1, Vietnam has attracted US$5.4 billion FDI capital, higher than the average level of 2007 and recorded a high reserve volume of foreign currency. In the next time, the government will propose the National Assembly to adjust inflation and economic growth targets within this year. He added, the whole year's economic growth could be targeted at 6-7.5% that is considered to be high for Vietnam.
Moreover, the government could cut 10% in costs for overseas assignment and focus on effective projects that can benefit the economy more.
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