Manufacturing, exports set to surpass targets
This year's industrial production and export targets are likely to be surpassed, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
Industrial production reached VND645.7 trillion (US$33.9 billion) in the first 10 months of the year, up 13.7 per cent over the same period last year. The growth target for the whole year is 13.5 per cent.
The targeted export value of $70 billion for this year is also likely to be met, the ministry said in a regular online meeting held on Monday.
Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Le Danh Vinh asked companies and relevant agencies to focus on production, invest in basic construction and boost exports in the remaining months of the year.
He also asked the industrial and trade sectors to closely monitor the demand and supply of goods, secure enough supply and stabilise prices. The power sector should make sure that there is sufficient electricity supply for production until the end of the year, he said.
The ministry's Market Management Department, in co-operation with the Ministry of Finance's Price Management Department, will strengthen their oversight and strictly penalise activities of speculation and hoarding of goods, trade fraud, as well as violations relating to pricing, quality and food safety and hygiene during the remaining months of this year and early 2011.
Vinh also called for stronger trade promotion programmes in the domestic market that also takes further the campaign for Vietnamese people to give priority to using Vietnamese goods. More locally produced goods should reach rural and remote areas.
Many participants at the meeting raised their concern over the increase in prices of essential goods including rice, foodstuff, petrol and fertiliser products. With demand for these goods higher towards the year-end, low income people could suffer, they noted.
The price increase will also have an adverse impact on efforts to keep the consumer price index to a single digit this year.
Nguyen Xuan Chien of the ministry's Domestic Market Department said the Tet (Lunar New Year) festival falls in January next year so enterprises must prepare goods earlier to meet the rising demand.
The increase in prices for the coming festival is not because of a shortage of goods, but because enterprises are buying more goods for exports and for reserves in cases of floods, not to mention the depreciation of the dong against the US dollar, Chien said.
Other participants at the meeting said many rice exporters have begun buying more rice to meet export contracts, and the recent floods and storms have obstructed transport of food to many regions. These have significantly increased food prices in several areas, including the central region and the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta, they said.
Several foreign-invested enterprises were focusing on importing goods and selling them in the local market for profit instead of making goods for the local market as well as export, said the head of the Import-Export Department under the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Phan Van Chinh.
He said that in the first 10 months of 2010, the value of goods imported by foreign-invested enterprises increased by 40 per cent while imports by local enterprises rose just 20 percent.
Chinh said the high import figures would affect trade deficit and worsen the threat of higher inflation facing the country's economy.
He asked relevant agencies to place the import and sale of imported goods by foreign-invested enterprises under stricter management.
vietnamnews
|