At its monthly meeting in Hanoi on October 26, the Vietnamese cabinet focused on the social and economic performance in the past ten months and discussed measures to meet the country’s yearly targets. During the meeting, cabinet members agreed that the economy is on the right track to recovery, with inflation under control, interest rates cut and improvements made in industrial production. They praised encouraging achievements in socio-economic development over the past 10 months thanks to the drastic measures implemented by the government. They also affirmed that policies on education, job generation and social welfare and security have been ensured along with the maintaining of political security and social order.

However, the cabinet also pointed to shortcomings such as the economy’s slow recovery, sluggish growth in credit balance and the abundance of non-performance loans.

More effective solutions should be pursued to ease difficulties for producers and businesses, facilitating firms to access credits while focusing investment in production and other priority fields, cabinet members said.

Speaking at the event, Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam Nguyen Van Binh assured the cabinet that very effort is being made to manage monetary policies dealing with bad debts while maintaining stable interest and exchange rates.

Many cabinet members suggested tighter market management in the last months of the year to prevent inappropriate price hikes, cross-border smuggling and the production and trade of fake and low-quality commodities.

The cabinet also discussed measures to prevent natural disasters and overcome their consequences.

According to a report released at the meeting, eight out of 11 tropical storms in the East Sea this year struck Vietnam, killing and causing 211 people to go missing since early this year. The disasters also caused total losses of over VND21 trillion (US$987 million).

In order to help the disaster-hit localities overcome the aftermath, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung decided to provide seedlings and breeding animals worth over VND428 billion and 1,600 tons of rice to them. The Prime Minister also stressed the importance of obtaining a growth of 5.4 percent for this year, saying that this will create a basis for a higher growth in 2014 and the following years.