In 2020, in the extreme difficulties caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which heavily affected economic growth and budget revenues, Yen Bai Department of Finance proactively and effectively accomplished the “dual tasks" of preventing the pandemic and developing socio-economic activities, contributing to excellently fulfilling the task of the state budget collection in 2020 and the five-year period 2016-2020.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Trang Nhung, Director of Yen Bai Department of Finance, said that after identifying difficulties, the Department of Finance actively coordinated with other sectors and localities to evaluate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic to promptly advise and adjust tasks and solutions for budget revenue collection in order to achieve the goals. At the same time, it implemented many timely and flexible solutions such as exemption, reduction, extension of taxes, fees, charges, land rental support for businesses and people to overcome difficulties caused by the pandemic. It closely coordinated with the Department of Planning and Investment to perform various tasks such as balancing and allocating funding sources; Restructuring budget spending in the direction of converting from budget allocation to contracting for bidding under Decree 32/2019/ND-CP, thereby saving recurrent expenditures, increasing resources for development investment spending.

In addition, the Department of Finance paid attention to promoting administrative procedure reform to better handle dossiers of administrative procedures for local people and businesses in a quick and favorable manner, contributing to the improvement of the provincial business investment environment and improving competitiveness. Currently, the Department of Finance has 27 administrative procedures under its jurisdiction; of which 100% of administrative procedures are carried out at the Provincial Public Administration Center. By the end of December 2020, the Department of Finance received and processed 1,082 dossiers, mainly online public services at level 4, with all administrative procedures handled before and within deadlines rated satisfied and very satisfied.

As budget revenue collection in 2020 faced many difficulties due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the director and deputy director of the department directly joined the Working Group of the provincial People's Committee to conduct a field trip in order to remove difficulties, urge localities in the province to complete the work of budget collection with the highest determination to ensure the budget collection goals.

With synchronous and continuous solutions, by 2020, the state budget revenue in Yen Bai province reached VND3,592 billion, or 142.5% of the estimate assigned by the Central Government equal to 108.8% of the estimate assigned by the province and it was one of the three provinces in the country with a higher budget revenue than the estimate assigned by the Central Government. The total state budget revenue for the 2016-2020 period reached VND14,849 billion.

Striving to successfully implement the financial - state budget tasks in 2021

In 2021, the first year of implementing the five-year socio-economic development plan of 2021-2025, Yen Bai province sets the target for total state budget revenue in the province to be VND4,000 billion, an increase of more than VND400 billion compared to results achieved in 2020.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Trang Nhung shared that this would be a very heavy task. To ensure the completion of the State budget revenue target in 2021 and for the whole period of 2021-2025, it would be necessary to well promote development potential, mobilize all resources and the participation of the entire political system, especially highlight the efforts under the leadership and direction of the party committees, local authorities in realizing the targets. It is important to restructure revenues and expenditures, implement synchronous solutions to develop and nurture sustainable revenue sources. It is essential to continue to attract investment capital, improve the business investment environment and create favorable conditions for businesses.

The Department of Finance will coordinate with other departments, sectors and localities to advise and implement groups of specific solutions such as building annual socio-economic growth scenarios to help agencies, units, localities, especially the agencies that directly carry out the budget collection work to establish appropriate collection progress. It will strengthen the reform of administrative procedures, shorten the time for handling related documents and procedures and speed up the implementation of investment projects. It will mobilize resources to accelerate the disbursement of basic construction and investment capital to create a basis for completion of estimates and increase budget revenues. It will actively review revenue sources, well exploit revenue sources and taxes; strengthen inspection, analysis and evaluation of data, and combat budget revenue loss. At the same time, it will promote the implementation of procedures and documents related to the transfer, issuance of land use right certificates, ground clearance for land fund development to generate revenues for the budget, contributing to successful completion of the targets and tasks of the budget revenue collection in 2021 and the period 2021-2025 according to the goals set in the 16th Provincial Party Congress Resolution.