Vietnam’s state revenue topped VND549 trillion (US$24.16 billion) in the first five months of 2018, a 13.6 percent increase from a year earlier, the Ministry of Finance said in a recent report.

Crude oil made up VND23.7 trillion ($1.04 billion), up 22 percent from the same period of 2017, of the total state budget collection, according to the report.

Government spending reached VN526.6 trillion ($23.11 billion), up 9.2 percent year-on-year, in the same five-month period.

Spending on development investment was about VND94.1 trillion ($4.14 billion), whereas regular expenditure made up VND379 trillion ($16.68 billion) and interest payment amounted to VND50.7 trillion ($2.23 billion).

The finance ministry also gave a detailed account of the government’s debt repayment, which totaled VND85,817 billion ($3.78 billion) in the Jan-May period.

Of these, VND65,727 billion ($2.89 billion) was spent on repaying domestic debts, and VND20,089 billion ($883.9 million) on foreign debts.

In term of debt structure, the share of foreign borrowing has declined from 61 percent in 2011 to 40 percent by the end of 2017.

Vietnam’s legislature caps the country’s public debt at 65 percent of GDP.

By the end of 2016, the Southeast Asian country’s national debt was estimated at around 63.6 percent of GDP.

But thanks to tight management, the figure declined to 61.4 percent by the end of 2017, Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung told lawmakers at the legislature’s fifth session that wrapped up in Hanoi last week.

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