Addressing the Government’s May regular meeting held on June 1, which reviewed the socio-economic situation in May and the first five months of 2024 and discussed the focal tasks for June and beyond, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh demanded efforts be invested in renewing traditional growth drivers and strongly promoting new ones, according to a report from the Vietnam News Agency.

The Government leader perceived that the socio-economic situation in May continued the positive trend and reaped better results than the previous month. The five-month situation was also better than the same period last year in most areas.

Growth was boosted in all the three sectors of industry, agriculture, and services. The macro-economy stayed stable, inflation under control, and major balances ensured.

During January - May, the consumer price index (CPI) increased 4.03% year on year. The state budget revenue was equivalent to 52.8% of this year’s target and rose 14.8% from a year earlier. Foreign trade value grew 16.6%, with 8.01 billion USD in trade surplus. Total foreign direct investment (FDI) topped 11 billion USD, up 2%. Meanwhile, tourism continued recovering strongly as seen in the number of international arrivals surging 64.9%, statistics show.

Many international organisations have released optimistic predictions of Vietnam’s economic growth in 2024, the PM noted.

Besides, cultural and social aspects, institutional building, the fight against corruption and negative phenomena, national defence, security, and external relations have been fostered. The quality of people’s life has been improved. Vietnam’s prestige and stature in the world have also increased further, according to PM Chinh.

However, he noted, there remain shortcomings, problems, difficulties, and challenges such as the high pressure on inflation and exchange rates, hard credit access in the real estate market, slow policy response in some places, along with the complicated food poisoning, fire, and crime situation.

Mentioning some main tasks for the coming time, the Government leader demanded continuing the proactive, flexible, timely, and effective monetary policy that is coordinated harmoniously and strongly with a reasonably expanded and focus-driven fiscal policy.

Ministries, sectors, and localities must work harder to facilitate enterprises and people’s access to credit to achieve credit growth of about 5% for the first half and 15% for the entire year. Lending interest rates should be cut by another 1 - 2%. In particular, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) and the Ministry of Construction have to immediately take concrete measures to step up the disbursement of the credit package worth 120 trillion VND (4.7 billion USD) for social housing development.

Strong actions are required to stabilise the gold market, raise the state budget revenue and reduce spending, foster digital transformation, and continue to exempt or cut taxes, fees and charges to tackle production and business obstacles. More measures are also needed to keep markets and prices stable, especially for petrol, oil, essential goods, housing, and food, according to the PM.

Asking for traditional growth drivers to be renewed and new ones strongly promoted, he said it is necessary to accelerate public investment projects, fuel private investment, enhance public - private partnerships, selectively attract FDI, consolidate traditional markets and explore new markets, strongly stimulate domestic consumption, and facilitate e-commerce and cashless payment.

Concrete and effective mechanisms and policies are also needed to robustly boost new growth drivers, develop regional and urban economy, and bolster green transition, circular, sharing and knowledge-based economy, along with such new fields as semiconductor and artificial intelligence.

Besides, it is important to seize farm produce export opportunities, augment efforts to have the “yellow card” warning over illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing lifted soon, ensure sufficient water for agriculture, power generation and people’s life, and better prevent forest fires, PM Chinh went on.

Regarding services, he asked for strongly developing potential sectors, increasing tourism attraction, and tightening management of tourism quality and prices as the summer travel season is coming.

At the meeting, the Cabinet chief also requested ministries, sectors, agencies, and localities ensure social security and people’s life, prepare for salary reforms, strengthen national defence and security safeguarding, further combat crimes and corruption, and quickly and effectively implement the international treaties and agreements to which Vietnam is a party.