The Finance sector: Over-collection of budget and overspending to ensure safety

Income from non-state enterprise sector has the highest rate of increase. Photo: Nguyen Hien.

Over-collection and overspending to ensure safety

Sharing with the press recently, Deputy Minister of Finance Do Hoang Anh Tuan said that according to the statistics, by 12.30 pm on December 31st, 2017, total State budget revenue reached 105.4%, exceeded the estimate assigned by Congress of 5.4%, equivalent to over 66 trillion VND. It was estimated that the figure of over-collection was about 70,000 billion VND.

According to the leaders of the Ministry of Finance, the above result was thanks mainly to the efforts of the business community in boosting production and business, to achieve economic growth of 6.81%. Specifically, in the state budget revenue structure of 2017, revenues from taxes, fees, the non-state enterprises increased the highest, up 23% over the same period last year; the FDI sector increased by 20% over the same period; personal income tax increased by 22% over the same period. Another reason was the close direction of the Government in reforming administrative procedures, improving the business investment environment; the reform of the tax administrative procedures in 2017 was a very important step, raised the tax payment index of Vietnam to 86/190 countries, up 81 levels compared with the previous year, equal to the level of the ASEAN 4.

In addition, the Government issued Decree No. 20/2017/ND-CP on anti - price transfer, anti-budget revenue loss has created the premise and legal basis for the Tax to promote the tax inspection and examination. The tax inspection and inspection processed to increase over 17,000 billion VND of revenue, struggled to reduce losses over 33,000 billion VND. Dealing with tax debt also achieved very important results. These were the important reasons for the Tax in excess of the budget estimate assigned by the National Assembly.

As for the revenues from export-import activities, “close the book” by December 31st, 2017, the state budget revenue of the Customs sector was 297,082 billion VND, equal to 104.24% of the estimate, equal to 100.7% of the target set by the Party Civil Affairs Committee of the Finance Ministry, up to 9.47% in comparison with 2016. In order to achieve this revenue, the Customs implemented many synchronous and drastic solutions, from the administrative reform, modernization, reducing the clearance time for the export-import goods, combating bad debt, combating revenue losses, strengthening the anti-smuggling, inspection, examination... The most important thing is that the over-collection from exporting and importing contributed to help the Financial sector completing the Central budget estimate assigned by the National Assembly.

Sharing of solutions to ensure the central budget balance, the Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung said at the interrogation session at the 4th session of the National Assembly. In addition to deploying the solutions on increasing the State budget revenues, the Ministry of Finance asked that the localities receiving the subsidies from the Central government had to ensure themselves. If the localities were in deficit, they might use local sources for treatment, including reserve cases, the Central government could compensate in some cases, but almost all cases the Central government did not compensate. In addition, the revenues from the localities that were regulated for the Central government were considered as key to increase revenue. Besides, the management of Value Added Tax refund was controlled strictly to increase outstanding items for the Central balance. The units also strengthened the inspection, examination, especially the groups and large corporations; collected drastically from equitization. These solutions helped to balance the central budget and help the total budget revenue exceed the estimates.

Happily, after a period of continuous increase, overspending in 2017 has been assured. In 2011 and 2012, overspending were at 5.3% of GDP, 2013 was 6.6% of GDP, 6.33% of GDP in 2014 and 6.28% of GDP in 2015. The figures were higher than the Congress's decision of 4.5 percent GDP in the whole period. There are many reasons for increasing overspending, including the high increase of recurrent expenditure and the demand of the expenditure increase for development investment. The State budget revenue always reached and exceeded the plan, but due to large expenditure needs, the budget deficit had to be maintained. By 2016, the budget deficit was be kept at estimate level with a plan of 4.95% of GDP in the report to the National Assembly (an implementation of 5.64% of GDP). So far, in 2017, the overspending has ensured in the both absolute figure (not exceeding 178,300 billion VND) and relative figures (not exceeding 3.5% GDP).

Strict control of expenditures

Towards 2018, the task of the Financial sector for balancing the State budget is more severe when a series of tariffs decreased sharply by 0% according to the integration commitments. In particular, 2018 is the important transitional year for implementing the 5-year Socio-Economic Development Plan 2016-2020, the second year for implementing the major resolutions and guidelines of the Party and the National Assembly, such as the economy re-structural Plan in the period 2016 - 2020; undertakings and solutions to restructure the State budget, and public debt management to ensure a safe and sustainable national finance; five-year national financial plan for 2016-2020; the medium-term public investment plan for the period 2016 - 2020. Therefore, it requires determination and efforts of the entire Finance sector to implement successfully the targeted State budget-financed tasks. In order to be able to complete its tasks, the Finance sector will continue to implement active and tight fiscal policies in close co-ordination with the monetary policy to ensure the macroeconomic stability and control of inflation under the defined target, to promote the economic growth and support the market development, create a solid momentum for the socio-economic development in the period of 2016-2020. Along with that, the business environment has improved strongly; to create favorable conditions for the development of various economic sectors, ensure the equality of competition in order to promote high and sustainable growth and create sustainable and stable budget revenue sources.

The Ministry of Finance will also stick to the objectives of directing and managing the State budget expenditures closely, economically and in accordance with the regulations; improving the efficiency of using the State budget. For the localities, the spending shall be spent within the estimates, the localities will strive to collect over the estimates, and take the initiative in allocating their sources for the implementation of the State's promulgated policies, reducing the amount of support from the Central budget.

Further suggestion, Mr. Bui Duc Thu, Deputy Head of the National Assembly's Standing Committee said that the State budget expenditure might be restructured in the direction of reducing the proportion of recurrent expenditures and increasing expenditure on investment. For investment in the infrastructure projects, the effective targets should be taken first; it should be decentralized and identified clearly that the more they had rights, the bigger they had responsibilities, accompanied by the mechanism of inspection and control in time. The management mechanism might pay attention to preventing negative occurrence and loss.