Finance group to focus on restructuring   Deputy Prime Minister Vương Đình Huệ chairs the first meeting of the National Financial and Monetary Policy Advisory Council yesterday. - Photo vietstock.vn HÀ NỘI - The National Financial and Monetary Policy Advisory Council will concentrate on dealing with the reorganisation of credit institutions and State-owned enterprises, and handling bad debts during the rest of the year. The council, which is tasked to advise the Government on financial and monetary issues, will also focus on restructuring State budget revenues and spending, assuring public debt security, and working out schemes against dollarisation in the economy. Deputy Prime Minister Vương Đình Huệ made the announcements as he chaired the first meeting of the council yesterday, after the 31-member commission was established following a decision by Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc on June 17. Huệ is the chairman of the council, and its standing vice chairman is State Bank of Việt Nam Governor Lê Minh Hưng. Two other vice chairpersons are Minister of Finance Đinh Tiến Dũng, and National Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Vũ Viết Ngoạn. Huệ said the council will have an “independent voice” while consulting financial and monetary operations of the Government and the Prime Minister. He assigned the State Bank of Việt Nam – the standing agency of the council – to regularly poll international experts, entrepreneurs and scientists to support the operations, besides holding quarterly council meetings. Yesterday, Huệ received Standard Chartered Việt Nam General Director Nirukt Sapru at the Government headquarters, asking British bank Standard Chartered to continue to assist the Vietnamese Government in working with international credit rating agencies. He said the Government needs recommendations from the bank so that the rating agencies can have comprehensive and objective assessments about Việt Nam’s socio-economic situation. This is necessary for the country to improve its image in the international arena in general, and investors’ world in particular. He also asked the bank to keep a close contact with the Ministry of Finance in monitoring global capital market developments, forecasting macro-economic conditions, and developing the local financial market. Sapru suggested that Việt Nam should pay more attention to its bond issuances in international markets, because this is a premise for effective public debt management. During a working session on public debt on Tuesday, Huệ urged ministries, sectors and localities to quicken capital disbursement to ensure job generation and national economic growth. Slow disbursement Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyễn Chí Dũng said the disbursement progress in public investment projects had been slow this year. Ministries, sectors and localities had disbursed a combined total of over VNĐ83 trillion (US$3.73 billion) worth of public investment capital this year, equivalent to some 33 per cent of the quota set by the National Assembly for 2016. Dũng attributed the situation to slow submission of capital plans by the authorities and incomplete documents guiding the assessment and approval of investment projects. Obstacles in land clearance and weak competence of contractors also led to the tardiness. Huệ asked the Ministries of Planning and Investment and Finance to promptly review the guiding documents and intensify inspection of the quality of public investment projects, to promote their roles towards socio-economic growth. Businesses and trade During another working session with the Ministry of Finance on Tuesday, Huệ said the issuance of a list of imported products, which must follow customs procedures at Vietnamese border gates, must be under established laws while creating favourable conditions for businesses and trade. He asked the ministry to attach importance to these issues when compiling the list of imported products which must have customs procedures conducted at Vietnamese border gates. “Careful study is needed, given the recent promulgation of Government Resolution 35/NQ-CP on support to enterprises by 2020,” he said. The possible impact, such as congestion of goods at border gates or rising business costs, must be taken into consideration, he said. According to the Ministry of Finance, which was in charge of compiling the list, the issuance was in line with Decree No 08/2015/NĐ-CP instructing the implementation of customs procedures following the Law on Customs, with one term stating that based on import and export in each period, the Prime Minister had decided the list of imported products with customs procedures to be conducted at border gates. Deputy Minister of Finance Đỗ Hoàng Anh Tuấn said the move was aimed at tightening customs checks on products to limit consumption in the domestic market or on products with high risk of trade frauds. The finance ministry has proposed 11 categories of products to be included in the list. These include cigarettes, cigars, tobacco and alcohol, as well as beer, cars with less than 16 seats, motorcycles with cylinder capacity above 125cm3 and aircraft, along with yachts which were subject to special consumption tax, air conditioners with capacity of less than 90,000 BTU, cards, votive papers and imported products which enjoyed preferential import taxes. Nguyễn Ngọc Anh, deputy director of the General Department of Customs, said those products accounted for just 8.7 per cent of the total customs clearance volume, thus the impact on enterprises would not be significant. - VNS