Vietnam strives to achieve a GDP growth rate of 6.5% or even higher in 2021, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc set a target for ministries and localities at a conference between the Government and centrally-run localities on Dec. 29. 

Concluding the national conference between the Government and centrally-run localities in Hanoi on December 29, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc says Vietnam should gear up in 2021 for the following years.

“Our goal is to catch up and surpass regional and global development levels in a number of areas, including agricultural production, in the coming years,” said Phuc.

“More efforts are needed to soon turn Vietnam into an agricultural powerhouse with a modern and efficient agricultural processing industry,” he told the conference.

To meet the goal, the Prime Minister said it is imperative for Vietnam to boost economic growth in terms of both quantity and quality while speeding up economic restructuring.

Emphasizing the important role of infrastructure development, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc affirmed he will launch a number of key inter-regional traffic works after the conference.

He asked ministries and localities to focus on renovating national governance and continue to build a streamlined, effective and efficient State apparatus, by promoting decentralization and ensuring the unified management role of the locality.

Localities are well prepared to pool resources for production and to capitalize on new investment waves, he stressed.

He warned localities about environmental disasters they would suffer in economic development, saying Vietnam will certainly not trade the environment for economic growth at any cost.

The Government leader also requested ministries and localities to soon overcome shortcomings and pay more attention to policies on social security, especially those on poverty reduction in ethnic minority areas, and at the same time increasing the number of people benefitting from social and health insurance services.