Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung (Photo: VNA)

Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung, the first to field questions, talked about tax management, customs, ensuring safe and sustainable financing, and measures to improve public debt management. He also answered questions on measures to speed up the clearance of imported or exported goods and create favorable conditions for businesses: “The Prime Minister has agreed to implement on-the-spot inspections in major customs areas: Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Hai Phong, Lang Son, Da Nang, Lao Cai, Quang Ninh, and Quang Ngai for faster customs clearance. We should reduce paperwork, overlapping procedures, and specialized inspections and change pre-check to post-inspection. We continue to implement the national one-door mechanism and ASEAN’s one-stop-shop regime for 2016-2020 and complete the second phase of the automatic e-customs clearance project.”

Mr. Dung said the Finance Ministry will continue to work on administrative reform. He answered a question on controlling state budget overspending: “We will continue to use loans for important projects, control the speed of public debt growth, clearly identify the amount of overspent state budget, create a budget deficit reduction roadmap, and tighten government guaranteed loans. Another solution is limiting disbursement of ODA loans to 13.2 billion USD. We need to be transparent in state finance, particularly public investment.”

Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue (Photo: VOV)

Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue answered a question on public debt: “The government refuses to raise the public debt ceiling and asked the Finance Ministry to create a plan for restructuring budget revenues and expenditures to ensure safe and sustainable finance. We have to maintain public debt at no more than 65% of GDP, government debt at no more than 54%, and foreign debt at no more than 50%, until 2020.”

The same day, Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung clarified issues relating to his sector.