Sustained economic recovery and growth together with surges in retail sales, industrial production, and exports lead to increase in State budget revenue.
The government has issued measures for implementing the Planning for Inland Waterway Infrastructure in the 2021-2030 Period and Vision to 2050, which identifies 17 investment projects using State budget capital and a series of projects upgrading and expanding passenger and cargo ports using enterprise capital. A breakthrough mechanism on access to foreign preferential loans by the government will also be applied for infrastructure projects that effectively connect inland waterway traffic with seaports.
The sixth plenum of the 13th Party Central Committee opened in Hanoi on October 3 and is expected to last for a week. Many key issues will be discussed and decided on, such as Vietnam’s socio-economic development plan and State budget estimates for 2023, the State finance budget plan from 2023 to 2025, and the national master plan from 2021 to 2030 and vision to 2050.
The Ministry of Transport (MoT) has just proposed that the Government submit to the National Assembly for consideration to allocate more than VND13 trillion ($547 million) of state budget to pay investors and businesses and terminate contracts before the project deadline of 8 inadequate BOT projects. According to MoT, completely solving the problems of the eight BOT projects will restore investors' confidence in transport infrastructure projects and free up credit from commercial banks for PPP projects in the coming period.
The Ministry of Finance has said that total State budget revenue reached VND106 trillion ($4.48 billion) in August, a fall of VND46 billion ($1.94 billion) compared to July. Revenue increased in the first eight months, however, by 19.4 per cent year-on-year and posted a surplus of more than VND250 trillion ($10.56 billion).
Hai Phong Customs collected VND52.029 trillion ($2.2 billion) for the State budget in the first eight months of 2022, an increase of VND7.473 trillion ($317 million) compared to the same period of 2021. The result represented 77.6 per cent of the annual target of VND67.05 trillion ($2.85 billion) assigned to the northern port city by the General Department of Vietnam Customs. Hai Phong Customs said it has also achieved positive results in administrative reform, facilitating and reducing costs for businesses.
To promote the interest rate support program from the State budget for loans to businesses, cooperatives, and business households, which has now been implemented for three months, the State Bank of Vietnam has required that commercial banks review efforts and notify eligible customers.
In the context that 4 BOT projects are failing due to a sharp decrease in revenue, reaching less than 30 per cent, disrupting the financial plan and putting businesses at risk of bankruptcy, the Ministry of Transport proposed to arrange them almost VND5 trillion ($211 million) of state budget capital to return to enterprises and recover projects.
Disbursed investment in August from the State budget managed by Hanoi reached VND4.188 trillion ($178 million), up 2.2-fold year-on-year. Investors and construction units have focused their resources on speeding up construction progress at key projects to boost disbursement and create a driver for the capital’s development.
Total State budget revenue reached more than VND1.2 quadrillion ($51.3 billion) in the first eight months of this year, up 19.4 per cent year-on-year and representing 85.6 per cent of the annual estimate. State budget expenditure, meanwhile, stood at VND956.5 trillion ($40.89 billion), for a surplus of nearly VND252 trillion ($10.77 billion); the highest for many months.