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Inflation pegged, says minister
The Government was confident it had the required tools and margins to rein in inflation to under the 7 percent target set for the year, Minister of Finance Vu Van Ninh said yesterday.
He told the National Assembly Standing Committee there would be no more increases this year in the prices of electricity and coal sold to the electricity production sector.
The latest rise of 6.8 per cent in power price was reasonable, he said.
The price of coal was also raised but the increase is only applied to coal sold to the power production, thus the rises had little impact on people's lives and the economy, he said.
At the meeting, Finance Budget Committee Chairman Phung Quoc Hien expressed concern about the possibility of an unexpected surge in this year's inflation because this month's Consumer Price Index was forecast to rise by 0.5 per cent while in previous years the CPI went down in March.
Ninh confirmed that the 3.35 per cent rise in CPI in the first two months of the year was normal and the CPI increase in March was due to changes in electricity and petrol prices.
If the Government managed the situation properly, an unexpected surge was unlikely, he said.
When asked about Petrolimex's adjustment in petrol prices, the minister said the Government's Decree 84 allowed petroleum enterprises to change prices, but under strict conditions and supervision.
Petrolimex's petrol price rise was in line with regulations and market performance, he said.
However, the ministry had asked petroleum enterprises to widen the period between consecutive adjustments to at least 20 days, rather than 10 days as regulated.
Meanwhile, ministry responsibility for State asset management was highlighted at the meeting by problems currently being faced by Jetstar Pacific Airlines.
Deputy Nguyen Van Tuyet from the northern mountainous province of Yen Bai asked why the airline, which had suffered losses for 14 years, was still allowed to operate with high salaries paid to its leaders.
Security and Defence Committee Chairman Le Quang Binh said the Law on Bankrupcy had been approved in the Assembly's 10th plenary session so why had the Government saved the airline and not let it go bankrupt.
Ninh said that Pacific Airlines, a subsidiary of Vietnam Airlines, had been established in 1991 and ran at a loss until 2005. It would have gone bankrupt but the Government wanted to develop a competitive airline market and the trademark of the airlines had been promoted.
Thus it decided to restructure the airline.
Australia's Qantas assessed the value of the airline and bought a 30 per cent stake to set up the low-cost Jetstar Pacific Airlines.
Since then, Jetstar Pacific had faced many difficulties which it tried to overcome by cutting expenses and reducing salaries and the number of foreign workers, but because of its petrol price hedging the airline had not made a profit.
In the hedging contracts signed in 2008, Jetstar Pacific agreed to buy fuel at US$120-130 per barrel in the international market in case the price continued going up, but the next year the price dropped.
Jetstar Pacific now has six airplanes with 20 per cent of market share, he said.
Meanwhile, in a discussion on equitisation, Ninh admitted that progress was slower than planned. Last year, there were 65 enterprises equitised, accounting for 9 per cent of the 2009-10 plan.
The reason were that some enteprises under equitisation were large, and the financial analysis and corporate value assessments had to be done with care and took more time.
In the world economic crisis, it was difficult for enterprises to find strategic shareholders, he added.
Construction toll
The high number of construction site accidents in Viet Nam was caused by the lack of regulations, safety inspectors and strict punishments, Minister of Construction Nguyen Hong Quan told National Assembly deputies yesterday.
Deputy Ma Dien Cu of Quang Ngai Province said labour accidents in the construction sector made up nearly 50 per cent of total labour accidents.
Between 2005-09, there were 703 accidents at construction sites, in which 104 people were killed and dozens injured, many of them young men cut down in their prime. In 2007 alone, 41 people died in 104 accidents.
Cu asked what was the main cause of the accidents and what were the solutions.
Quan said investors and contractors failed to ensure safety for their employees on the construction sites while the employees themselves did not have adequate knowledge or skills to protect themselves.
Further there were more than 1,250 labour regulation related to construction sites as well as technical and architectural conditions to ensure safety for people there.
However, the regulations had yet to catch up with modern technologies and complicated projects, he said.
For example, the underground projects and sky infrastructure, such as the Thu Thiem Tunnel or flyovers, had no legal technical standards to ensure labour safety, Quan said.
He admitted that this was due to the shortcomings of the ministry.
Quan said that legal documents and regulations would usually be updated with changes in technologies and kinds of projects.
Cu asked whether ministry inspections of construction sites were effective.
Quan said construction inspectors initially focused on documents and plans of building designs, technical standards and other matters. Then, they made field trips to the sites.
He admitted, however, that few violations were acted on.
Also, there was a shortage of construction inspectors, particularly at the district level, while in each locality there were dozens of construction sites operating at the same time.
The ministry's inspectors could not inspect such large number of construction sites in all localities, Quan said.
He pledged that the ministry would make regular inspections and construction inspectors would be diverted to the district level to ensure strict supervision and management of construction sites in all localities.
Quan said, however, that the high number of accidents involving workers on construction sites was also due to the absence of high penalities for breaches, meaning that no contractor or investor was punished for criminal neglect when an employee was killed on their site.
The issue was one that needed more attention from the ministries of labour, invalids, social affairs and public security.
Nguyen Van Phuc, deputy head of the National Assembly's Committee for Ethnic Minorities, said it was necessary to have regulations that suspended the operation of the projects until their owners handled shortcomings and ensured the safety of their workers.
Phuc said the ministry should check not only the construction sites themselves but also whether the workers employed by the contractors had sufficient skills.
He said the Ministry of Public Security needed to investigate and bring to court the contractors or investors whose violations caused deaths on construction sites.
Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan said that up to 75 per cent of labour accidents resulted from violations of the employers, so it was necessary to check all the legal documents to ensure there were punishment levels strict enough to prevent violations.
Ngan said that teaching labour safety to people was also necessary so they could stand up for their rights.
Assembly Vice Chairman Nguyen Duc Kien said the Ministry of Construction was responsible for boosting safety inspections of construction sites to minimise the labour accidents.
On the issue of accommodation for students and low-income people, Minister of Construction Nguyen Hong Quan said the projects to build accommodation for the poor and students, funded by the State budget, had been implemented.
More than 135,000 houses had been built for the poor in rural and mountainous areas since 2008, meeting one-third of the number of 500,000 houses planned to be built by 2012.
Dozens of dormitories for students had been built, he said.
However, accommodation projects for the low-income people in urban areas had yet to be implemented due to the fact that these were funded by enterprises with some support from the Government in terms of land or favourable legal mechanisms.
Quan said the ministry would put forward proposals to improve the implementation of these projects.
Kien said these projects would serve low-income people only.
Regarding urban planning, Quan said it was planned to move hospitals and universities to the outskirts of urban areas to lessen population densities.
Reviews needed
At the same meeting, Supreme People's Court chief judge Truong Hoa Binh said most of the requests for appeals or protests sent to the court would need reviewing under retrial procedures.
He said handling this type of request came mainly under the jurisdiction of the Supreme People's Court.
There were 6,665 new cases last year, along with 5,295 old cases, bringing the total to be reviewed under retrial procedures to nearly 12,000.
However, Binh said, the Supreme Court, the provincial People's Courts and Military Courts only solved 4,712 cases, or 39 per cent.
Assembly Legal Committee chairman Nguyen Van Thuan questioned the real reason for the backlog, aside from judge competencies.
Hung Yen Province deputy Vu Quang Hai highlighted the serious shortage of judges.
"On average, a judge has to handle 150 cases per year, which can be translated into two working days for each case. That might be one of the reasons leading to the high number of cases that had to be dismissed or changed or took a long time to process," he said.
Binh conceded that with the available human resources, the judiciary was only able to complete one-third of its work. To achieve the rate of 39 per cent meant they had to work around-the-clock from time to time.
Binh said the short-term solution was to share the workload with appellate courts and specific courts. In the long run, boosting the quality and number of staff was necessary, especially as the People's Court at the district level was encouraged to be granted more jurisdiction.
"The process is under way and should begin with training," Binh said.
In terms of education of judges, Binh asked for a bigger role for the Supreme People's Court. As of now, the Justice Institute under the Ministry of Justice was the official training institute for judges while the Supreme People's Court only provided additional training internally.
"The Supreme People's Court has made a request to the National Assembly to be given the training function because a judge can hardly deliver the best performance without hands-on experience. And the fact is many lecturers are from the court," Binh said.
"This model, in which the Supreme People's Court takes the leading role in training judges, applies in many other countries and will help the judicial system take the initiative in deploying personnel."
On the matter of land laws, Deputy Nguyen Dinh Xuan asked whether a citizen could fully demonstrate the right of appeal in cases related to a land dispute when there was a lack of consistency between three relevant legal documents: the Land Law, the Law on Complaint and Denunciation and the Law on Civil Procedure.
Closing the meeting, Assembly chairman Nguyen Phu Trong said the topics on debate received undivided attention from delegates and the discussions were robust. He said the question-and-answer session were an indispensable activity of the Standing Committee meetings and should continue to be promoted.
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