Vietnam should control inflation at 6-6.5% in 2013 according to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung
PM Dung requested tighter control over prices during the first quarter of next year as the Lunar New Year holiday often leads to a spike.
“It was an important result to curb inflation to 6.78% in 2012, however, the country will still face many difficulties in 2013, therefore, we should be targeting an inflation rate of 6-6.5% next year,” added the prime minister.
The government leader, however, said that economic restructuring, including public investment, state-owned enterprise and banking system restructure, remained slow.
According to the PM, both international and foreign investors have complained about complicated business procedures in Vietnam. He also cited the Japanese ambassador as saying that Vietnam offered less attractive incentives to investors than many other countries, yet its transport infrastructure remained weak. The country also lacked sufficiently skilled workers.
The PM noted that next year the country needed to concentrate on fulfilling poverty reduction targets, emphasising that the poverty rate of 40-50% in many localities remained unacceptable. The PM admitted to mistakes in his management.
The government will continue discussing solutions to settling bad debts and overly high inventories.
Under the government’s instruction, the State Bank of Vietnam will provide between VND20 trillion (USD952.3 million) and VND40 trillion (USD1.9 billion) for commercial banks to provide mortgages at reasonable rates for the next 10 years.