The country’s macro-economy has not improved as much as expected after a
year of restructuring and the process needed a strong boost, said
economists at the Spring Economic Forum opened on April 5 in the central
city of Nha Trang.
The two-day forum aims at reviewing a year of the country’s economic restructuring and putting forward solutions.
Chairman of the National Assembly’s Economic Committee Nguyen Van Giau
told the forum that restructuring the economy will take a long time. It
is now only in its early phases and initial progress has remained
insignificant, he said.
Director of the Vietnam Economics Institute
Tran Dinh Thien said that no significant changes in the basic trend of
the economy have been seen since 2007.
Thien said a slowdown in GDP
growth has occurred over past years, adding that the volatility of the
macro-economy remains high and there have been no signs of sustainable
control.
Macro-economic management is still mainly based on
administrative and short-term measures. These could be reasons for the
lack of improvement in the economy in the first quarter of this year,
Thien said.
He recommended that instead of short-term and
administrative measures, the Government should take long-term action to
create real changes in restructuring the economy.
Deputy Director
of the Central Institute for Economic Management Nguyen Dinh Cung said
there has been no significant reforms in market and integration
mechanisms.
Cung said that for the past year, restructuring has
failed to encourage businesses, let alone create favourable conditions
for firms and investors, to make them take risks and try new ideas, to
restructure their business and production and to make better use of
their human and financial resources.
Bui Tat Thang, from the
Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Institute for Development
Strategies, said that confidence in the business and investment
environment outlook has actually decreased as the economy faces a series
of serious problems, including high non-performing loans and rising
inventories. A number of firms have ceased or stopped operations.
As for the real estate market, Rector of the Banking Institute To Ngoc
Hung said, the Government should look at whether to tax property assets
in a move to prevent speculation.
Pumping capital into the real
estate market would create a bubble, which would cause the number of
non-performing loans to increase, Hung said. The State Bank of Vietnam
should maintain its tightened and cautious monetary policies to
control inflation and stabilise the macro-economy.
The forum was
jointly organised by the National Assembly’s Economic Committee, the
Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences and the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce
and Industry.
The assessments, analyses and proposals made by
researchers and economists at the forum will be submitted to the
National Assembly.-VNA