Hanoi (VNA) – The fourth plenum of the 13th Party Central Committee concluded on October 7, completing all its workingprogramme after more than three days.

In his closing remarks, Party General SecretaryNguyen Phu Trong said the committee acknowledged the serious impact of thefourth COVID-19 resurgence. The national economy shrank by 6.17 percent in thethird quarter of this year, pushing the nine-month growth down to 1.42 percent,the lowest for the period since 2000.

The growth for this year is therefore estimated atonly 3 percent, a far cry from the target of 6 percent set by the NationalAssembly. It is forecast that many main targets of this year would not bemet. 

Given the unpredictable developments of the COVID-19pandemic, the Party leader emphasised the need to change the mindset andstrengthen awareness of pandemic prevention and control in connection withrecovering and boosting business and production activities. He said appropriateplans and scenarios should be built and integrated into socio-economicdevelopment, finance-budget and public investment plans for 2022.

He ordered strengthening the leadership, managementand instruction in the implementation of socio-economic solutions, with a focuson supplementing and completing institutions, and removing obstacles toinvestment, production and business.

Along with restructuring a number of major sectorsand enterprises in trade, services, aviation and tourism that have beenaffected by COVID-19, there should be solutions to protect businesses in keyindustries and prevent the bankruptcy of big groups, thus helping the nationaleconomy keep pace with the world economy’s recovery trend, as well as therestructuring of the global production and supply chain, Trong said.

The Party Central Committee basically approved theoverall targets along with major tasks and solutions for 2022 as proposed bythe Government’s Party delegation, including moving back the time to implementsalary reforms under the resolution adopted at the seventh plenum of the 12th Party Central Committee.

The committee requested further reviewing andadjusting targets, tasks and solutions to submit them to the National Assemblyfor consideration, so as to ensure socio-economic development in 2022 and theyears to come.

Regarding Party building and rectification work, theParty chief noted a new point of this working session, which is to extend thescale of the work to the entire political system, with an emphasis on proactiveprevention and strict handling of the degradation in political thought,morality, lifestyle as well as other negative phenomena.

The plenum reached consensus in issuing newregulations on things that Party members are not allowed to do, which willserve as an important basis to handle violations by officials and Partymembers.

The Party leader said Party Central Committee laudedthe tremendous efforts and contributions as well as good deeds of people,soldiers and businesses in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, and thankedoverseas Vietnamese and international friends for their support./.