Second economic support package: feasibility should be considered

	Proposing to expand beneficiaries of support package of VND 62,000 billion
	Nguyen Bich Lam, former General Director of the General Statistics Office: "The second package should have a large enough impact in scale and be of a
	Unprecedented support packages

Many people affected by the Covid-19 pandemic are unable to access the VND62 trillion support package. Photo: Internet.

Evaluating the first support package and the expected second economic support package, Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung said the Government’s guidelines and policies to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic, ensuring social security, removing difficulties in business and production and supporting economic recovery are relatively comprehensive, targeted, timely and effective.

However, a number of guidelines and policies so far have expired or have not yet brought into play high effects due to slow institutionalization and delayed deployment.

That is, the conditions and procedures are quite complicated, the beneficiaries do not receive support in time, making the situation more difficult when the pandemic broke out again and limiting the effectiveness of support solutions on capital, interest rates and tax payment deadline extensions.

The Minister of Planning and Investment said, currently, the Ministry is working with relevant ministries and agencies to fully assess the implementation of issued policiesand making a far-reaching and comprehensive assessment of operations of businesses.

Thereby, to study and develop strong tasks and policy solutions to support economic recovery in the last months of 2020 and 2021.

In which, to further promote the implementation of highly effective and practical solutions that have been implemented; to study and amend a number of conditions that are not in accordance with reality and restrict the policy access of a number of targeted beneficiaries.

To build complementary tasks and solutions with scale and scope strong enough to ensure feasibility to sustain growth and recover as soon as the outbreak is brought under control.

In principle, Minister Nguyen Chi Dung emphasized that policies and solutions must correctly identify the problem, the right beneficiaries, ensure feasibility and can be implemented quickly.

When formulating policies, the delay in policy formulation and promulgation in Vietnam and the delay in the process of policy implementationmust be taken into account. In particular, it is necessary to have a consensus and high approval of policies, views, approaches and implementation methods to submit to the Government and the National Assembly for promulgation and effective implementation.

"This is a lesson learned from the implementation of policies in the early stages when the policies are issued, but they cannot be implemented or implemented ineffectively," said Minister Nguyen Chi Dung.

In addition, it is necessary to apply policies based on market principles, ensuring equality among economic sectors, business types and sizes, openness, transparency, accountability as well as responsibility to the State of businesses.

Regarding the social security support package of VND62 trillion issued under Resolution 42, as of July 13, 2020, the support package disbursed about VND11.5 trillion, the disbursement rate reached 18.2%, much lower than expectedand 11 million people and about 0.19% of business households were supported.

For the second support package, Mr. Nguyen Bich Lam, former Director General of the General Statistics Office, said that the Government should provide the following support packages through appropriate policies, with a large enough impact scale and medium and long-term period that meets four targets.

They are ensuring socio-economic stability, creating conditions for the economy to recover rapidly in the post-Covid-19 period; supporting economic activities, especially the business sector to prevent and minimize liquidity loss, bankruptcy, dissolution and to quickly recover when the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic declines and ceases; conducting economic restructuring in accordance with global changes after the pandemic; and stimulating domestic consumption and ensuring social security.

In September, the General Statistics Office conducted a second investigation on the impacts of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic on the operations of businesses.