During the Government’s regular meeting inHanoi on April 2, the PM said the socio-economic situation continued to improvein the first quarter this year, with gross domestic product growth of 7.38percent, the highest in a decade.
The agro-forestry-fisheries sector expandedby 4.05 percent, double that of the same period last year while agriculture andindustry-construction grew 2.08 percent and 9.77 percent, respectively.
Manufacturing and processing rose nearly 14percent, services went up 6.7 percent and wholesale – retail hiked 4.5 percent.
At the same time, Vietnam signed the Comprehensiveand Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership with 12 states, held anational conference on disaster prevention and control, the sixth GreaterMekong Sub-Region Summit and the 10th Cambodia – Laos – VietnamDevelopment summit, particularly the GMS Business Summit, during whichparticipants welcomed Vietnam’s initiatives, helping raise the country’sprestige in the international arena.
During the period, total retail and consumptionservices increased by 9.9 percent year-on-year. Foreign tourist arrivals inVietnam were estimated at 4.2 million, up 30.9 percent annually.
Total exports surged 22 percent to 54.3billion USD while social investment soared 10.4 percent.
The PM revealed that Nikkei said in its new releaseon the same day, the Nikkei Vietnam Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index was51.6 points, making it one of two countries with more than 50 points.
The business climate continued improvingwith the provincial competitiveness index reaching highest point since 2005. Vietnam’ssecurities market performed well in both scale and capitalisation with the VN-Indexhitting a 10-year high of 1,170 points. Positive performance was also seen inlabour, job, social welfare, culture-education and health care whileunemployment dropped by 2.2 percent.
The number of newly-established enterprisesonly rose 1.2 percent annually while the number of firms that halted productionremained high.
The PM urged promoting corporatedevelopment, especially in creativity and innovation.
Warning that though the consumer price indexfell in March and rose slightly in the first quarter, inflation is still arisk, so ministries and agencies should take measures to stabilisemacro-economy and control inflation.
He called for attention to latent risks ofcomplicated weather as Vietnam is one of the five countries hardest hit byclimate change.
As of late March, total State budgetcollection surpassed 308 trillion VND (13.68 billion USD), up 5.3 percentannually. State expenses were estimated at 290 trillion VND, up 1.7 percent.
Natural disasters caused losses of more than178 billion VND, a 3.1-fold increase annually. As of March 15, there were 1,085fires nationwide that killed 33 and injured 66, causing damage of more than 413billion VND.
In the morning, the Government discussed thesocio-economic performance in March and the first quarter this year, theimplementation of the Government’s Resolution on key measures to realise thesocio-economic development plan and State budget estimate for 2018.-VNA