Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has issued the Government’s master plan on following practices thrift and targeting wastefulness in dealing with the impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, natural disasters, and climate change, whilst developing the economy to meet this year’s socio-economic targets.

The master plan outlined the task of tightening financial and budgetary discipline, expanding the tax base, enhancing management over tax collection, drastically carrying out solutions relating to tax losses, transfer pricing and tax arrears, whilst strictly controlling the State budget’s overspending.

It also serves to highlight the need to continue restructuring the spending of the State budget in an effort to achieve effectiveness and sustainability, thereby ensuring a reasonable balance between saving and spending. This is in addition to an increase in spending on development investment, reducing the sum for frequent expenditure, and ensuring that adequate expenditure is spent on human development, social security, defence, and security purposes.

The implementation of the master plan will require strict compliance with the principle of budget transparency and thrift practices, whilst taking steps to prevent wastefulness immediately after the setting up of tasks. Indeed, a proactive review of policies and steps aimed at removing overlapping or inefficient aspects will need to be carried out, along with the arrangement of items of expenditure according to their level of priority and feasibility ahead in 2021.

This programme will focus on a serious review of the plans using ODA capital and concessional loans that are provided by foreign sponsors, the removal of unnecessary or poor-performing projects, and the arrangement of foreign-sourced public funds for projects carried out on schedule. This is along with no provision of funding from foreign loans for frequent expenditure.

It also urges an accelerated disbursement coupled with the effective use of public investment capital, both of which must be viewed as an important political task for stimulating production, business, and consumption, thereby creating jobs and guaranteeing social security.

Wage policy and social insurance reforms, apparatus re-organisation, and staff streamlining are also among solutions that can help to boost thrift and prevent wastefulness in line with the master plan.

With regard to public asset management and use, the scheme highlights the need to review and re-organise public assets, especially those relating to housing and land, in order to ensure that they are used for the correct purposes. Indeed, they should be in line with regulations, resolutely revoking assets used in wrong ways, and handling assets in accordance with law.

It also orders the serious adherence to legal regulations on the sale and transfer of public assets, along with the rigorous settlement of violations.