Hanoi (VNA)🦩 – Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has said that all ministries and localities should continue to work on three strategic breakthroughs in order to achieve the targets set for 2016 and the next five years.

The breakthroughs he mentioned are perfecting the socialist-oriented market economy institutions, improving human resources and building a synchronous infrastructure system. Summing up a 1.5-day teleconference between the Government and representatives from 63 localities nationwide on December 29 morning in Hanoi, the PM explained that market economy institutions will help mobilize and allocate resources effectively, while a good infrastructure system is a factor in enhancing national competitiveness and improving investment environment. To upgrade the infrastructure system, the Government leader suggested creating a mechanism to attract both domestic and foreign investment. He also emphasised the need to train high-quality human resources, and help businesses in technological renovation. At the same time, PM Dung reminded the government to continue paying attention boosting socio-cultural development and ensuring social equality and welfare, with the focus on the national target programmes on sustainable poverty reduction and new-style rural area building. He also called for more attention to ensuring people's right to mastery in order to create consensus in the society and strengthen the great national unity, as well as additional efforts to ensure defence security and protect national sovereignty. During the teleconference, Cabinet members answered questions raised by localities’ representatives. Regarding the road map to reduce private vehicles, Minister of Transport Dinh La Thang said that the Government has empowered localities to map out projects to cut down individual vehicles. In its project submitted to the Government in late 2013, the ministry designed roadmaps to gradually reduce private vehicles depending on the types of roads and the kinds of vehicles, while boosting the use of public transportation, Thang shared. Informing participants of the State budget and finance situation, Finance Minister Dinh Tien Dung said that as of December 26 budget collection reached 911 trillion VND (40.08 billion USD), exceeding estimates by 4.2 percent. The minister stressed the need to tighten spending management while keeping strict control of public debt and debts of local authorities, in order to ensure the capacity of debt payment in 2016. The world’s prices of oil next year can have huge impact on the budget, so the ministry has devised plans to manage the country’s oil prices, he said, suggesting further oil and gas exploration and exploitation. In terms of economic integration, Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai said that in 2016-2020, Vietnam will experience more market competition. Therefore, alongside boosting exports, more attention must be paid to competition on the domestic market. Meanwhile, Deputy PM Pham Binh Minh expressed concern about Vietnam’s limited awareness of advantages of the ASEAN Community. While other ASEAN countries are very active in seeking ways to seize opportunities offered by the ASEAN Community, Vietnam remains passive in the process, he stated, asking the ministries, sectors and localities to review policies to facilitate the involvement of businesses and people in the ASEAN Community. Deputy PM Vu Van Ninh proposed boosting production with higher quality and efficiency for active international integrations. He stressed the need to continue equitisation of State-owned enterprises, and restructure agricultural and forest companies, credit institutions and banks.-VNA