(VOV) – The Vietnamese Prime Minister has just approved the Master Plan on Economic Restructuring from now until 2020, with a growth paradigm change towards higher growth quality, efficiency and competitiveness. The plan will focus on reorganising public investment, credit organisations, and State-owned enterprises. The PM underlined that 2013 will be a year of restructuring. VOV reports…

Over the past two years, restructuring of the banking system has become a pressing task (Photo: Internet)

The National Assembly has predicted that 2013 will be a year when the Vietnamese economy will face continued difficulties, including a  level of bad debt, bloated inventories, and a frozen real estate market. But these will offer opportunities for Vietnam to boost solutions to restructure the economy, especially restructure businesses to improve the economy’s efficiency and business competitiveness. In such conditions, the master plan aims at maintaining a favourable and stable macroeconomic environment in which monetary policies will be realised effectively and carefully. Under the plan, the instruments will be exploited flexibly in close combination with fiscal policies to curb inflation, secure macro stability and a sound growth rate in line with the country’s specific socio-economic conditions in certain periods. The plan focuses on restructuring public investment, the banking system, and enterprises. In regards to public investment restructuring, the core will be public investment in which the Government plans to mobilize different resources for development investment, so that the total investment accounts for 30 – 35% of GDP. Economist Doctor Nguyen Minh Phong said ‘this year, Vietnam will minimize the inauguration of new projects while focusing on key projects that can be completed in 2013 to create an impetus for other projects that will be finished soon.’

To improve the quality and efficiency of public investment, inspection will be conducted while the management system will be perfected. Projects in infrastructure building should be decentralized and bidding is needed to make the implementation process better, along with a better supervisory mechanism.

From now until 2015, the Government will concentrate on making credit institutions’ financial status healthier by settling their bad debts, developing core business activities, securing liquidity and sustainable development, and increasing transparency in operations of these entities.

Another priority is to reshuffle State-owned enterprises (SOEs) with focus given to groups and state corporations. SOEs will be classified and reorganized concentrating on defense industry, fundamental industries, and high-tech. Equitisation will be promoted in SOEs where full State ownership is unnecessary. Doctor Nguyen Tham Duong, an economist, commented ‘In 2013, we should exert efforts to deal with bad debts, overstocked inventories, insufficient financial resources, and create reliability for the market and outline solutions for longer-term development.’

The concretization of measures to restructure the national economy this year is a breakthrough to make the economy healthier, and build trust for businesses towards sustainable development targets and growth model changes.

VOV