View of the conference

Hue, who is also chairman of the National Steering Committee on Price Management, chaired a year-end meeting on December 25 to discuss plans for the new year.

According to Nguyen Bich Lam, director general of the General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2019’s inflation has remained the lowest level for three consecutive years. It was 3.54 per cent in 2018 and 3.53 per cent in 2017. The low inflation has contributed to economic growth of more than 7 per cent in 2019.

The Deputy Prime Minister said in the context of low inflation, if the health ministry adds management expenses to healthcare service prices, inflation will be controlled between 3.3 and 3.9 per cent as planned by the committee at the beginning of 2019.

To add management expenses to healthcare service prices, the health ministry must count on economic and technical quotas of 9,000 services. Because the ministry already estimated quotas of only 60 basic services, it was not able to issue a decree on healthcare service price increase in 2019, he said.

Hue said it was a complicated process to count on healthcare service’s economic and technical quotas.

He assigned the health ministry to issue decrees on adding management expenses to groups of healthcare services, of which technical quotas have already been counted. The move aims to ensure the deadline of price adjustment in 2020.

Deputy Prime Minister Hue said that public service price control in 2020 should not just be based on market price, ministries and sectors should also consider global and geopolitical aspects, management of exchange rates and monetary policies, as well as co-ordination mechanisms among ministries and localities.

Saying inflation control in 2020 will face more challenges than last year, Hue agreed with the committee’s plan of keeping inflation between 3.59 and 3.91 per cent in 2020.

He asked ministries and sectors to ensure supply of all types of goods, not only food, and avoid price rises.

Hue ordered the Ministry of Industry and Trade to adjust power, oil and petrol prices following global market prices

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment was assigned to study and propose amendments to the Land Law and collaborate with relevant ministries and localities to assess the impact of land price changes following Decree No 96/2019 / ND-CP of the Government.