Hanoi (VNA) - On the occasion of the Lunar New Year, Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung has given an interview to e-newspaper VietnamPlus, in which he talked about the plan to implement state budget-financial tasks in 2021 with the aim of creating a momentum for the following years of the 2021-2026 term.

Continuing to review production support policies

Reporter: The COVID-19 epidemic is predicted to further challenge business and production in 2021, while the Government still has to carry out policies supporting businesses in term of taxes and fees. In such context, state budget collection is really a big challenge. So what will be solutions for dual targets of supporting pandemic-hit enterprises and ensuring budget revenue target in 2021?

Minister Dinh Tien Dung:෴ Reputable international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund said the world economy will gradually recover in 2021 after a severe recession in 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic. However, the recovery process is very different among countries because it depends on the development of the pandemic and vaccination efforts in countries.

For Vietnam, the achievements in 2020 in terms of socio-economic development and the state budget are very positive, contributing to the overall success of the whole 2016-2020 term. This helps strengthen people's trust in the Party’s leadership and State’s administration, as well as enhance the country's prestige and position in the international arena. However, it is still too early to say that we have come out of difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The internal weaknesses of our economy have not yet been resolved completely. In that context, the required task is to continue implementing the "dual goal" of both preventing the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuring socio-economic development as well as strive to fulfil State budget collection target in 2021 set by the National Assembly. In addition, the Ministry of Finance continues to promote administrative reform, build an e-government to better serve people and businesses.

Increasing disbursement of public investment

Reporter: Ministries, agencies and localities are facing difficulties in the disbursement of public investment capital from foreign loans. So what is your assessment on its impact on the national public debt as well as solutions for the next year's plan and the 2021-2025 period?

Minister Dinh Tien Dung:

In 2020, speed of disbursement of public investment capital from foreign loans is faster than those of previous years. However, in fact, the disbursement at ministries, branches and localities faced many difficulties. Because in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in the global scale, ODA-funded projects are more heavily affected than domestic projects as most ODA-funded projects are associated with foreign factors including the import of machinery and equipment, as well as the hiring of experts and workers. As a result, various projects could not complete basic construction volume and therefore, capital scheduled to be allocated for them were unable to be disbursed.

In addition, responsibility of people receiving public investment 🐈capital has not yet regulated seriously. The delay and weakness in bidding, contract signing, dispute settlement between concerned sides also impacted the disbursement speed.

Accelerating equitisation of state-owned enterprises

Reporter: It can be said that one of the measures to increase revenue for the state budget is the equitisation of state-owned enterprises. However, this process seems to face several bottlenecks? What are they and what are the solutions to this problem?

Minister Dinh Tien Dung:ꦐ First of all, we must confirm that the equitisation is not intended to directly increase revenue for the State budget. 217,300 billion VND (around 9.5 billion USD) collected from equitisation and capital divestment in the period 2016-2020 were used to re-invest in key State-run enterprises and development projects decided by the National Assembly.

Currently, the Ministry of Finance is building a project to restructure state-owned enterprises in the 2021-2025 period to submit to the Prime Minister because the efficiency of state-owned enterprises is an important drive of the economy, contributing to economic development./.

Thank you, Minister!