Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc explained at the working session on the morning of June 7.

Continuing the 7th Session Program, on the morning of June 7, the National Assembly discussed in the hall about "Approving the 2022 state budget settlement". Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Nguyen Duc Hai chaired the meeting.

Ensuring major economic balances, reducing public debt and budget deficit

At the working session, the majority of delegates said that the Government has paid attention to directing many synchronous and drastic solutions to implement issues related to finance and state budget.

According to delegate Do Thi Lan (Quang Ninh delegation), this is demonstrated through the 2022 budget revenue exceeding the estimate by 28.8%; revenue from state-owned enterprises, FDI, and non-state economic sectors all exceeding the estimate; balancing the budget, spending to implement the socio-economic recovery and development goals in 2022, ensuring major balances of the economy, reducing public debt and budget deficit...

Regarding the 2022 budget settlement, immediately after Resolution No. 91/2023/QH15 dated June 19, 2023 on approving the 2021 state budget settlement, the Government issued a directive with many specific solutions to achieve results. In addition, the Finance and Budget Committee has strengthened supervision and worked with relevant ministries and branches to urge the implementation of State regulations and resolutions of the National Assembly.

The Ministry of Finance, local ministries and branches, and the State Audit have made great efforts in reporting on the State budget settlement. Strengthening financial and budgetary discipline; reviewing and recovering overdue advances and implementing the conclusions of the State Audit have seen many positive changes.

Delegate Nguyen Truc Son (Ben Tre delegation) said that, through the 2022 settlement data, it shows that the Government's budget management work when 3 very important indicators of 2022 were all achieved and exceeded. That is, the revenue increase in 2022 was very high, creating resources to focus on investing in the construction of key projects, especially highways, inter-regional routes, national and local key projects; the actual expenditure was lower than the estimate; the budget deficit was also very economical, spending lower than the target assigned by the National Assembly.

Need to fully assess the basic construction debt picture

Besides the achieved results, delegate Do Thi Lan also frankly stated that there are still some limitations that need to be addressed.

Specifically, according to Ms. Lan, the 2022 state budget estimate report reported to the National Assembly at the 5th Session and the 2022 government budget settlement report still have large differences in both budget revenue and expenditure. In particular, the state budget settlement decreased by VND 407,317 billion, and the state budget deficit decreased by VND 49,317 billion. Thus, it is much lower than the estimate.

According to delegates, this affects the assessment of the results of the implementation of the state budget estimates, balancing the budget to achieve socio-economic development goals, and making state budget estimates for the following years.

"Therefore, it is recommended that the Government pay attention to directing the improvement of the quality of forecasting work, statistical synthesis and assessment of the focal agency responsible for preparing reports on the state budget and related agencies and units towards more substantial reporting data to assess the results of state budget implementation," said the delegate.

In addition, the delegate also said that the amount of budget transferred to the following year is still very large. Delegate Do Thi Lan affirmed that the central budget expenditure task at the local level has a very large demand but the budget cannot be arranged to carry it out, while the budget estimate must be canceled.

Typically, the implementation of the capital investment plan for the national target program only reached 37.7% of the estimate, with some localities achieving less than 10%. Implementing the capital plan for the Economic and Social Development Recovery Program according to Resolution No. 43/2022/QH15, some policies have low disbursement rates, especially the investment policy for health and labor development, which must be transferred to 2023 and 2024.

Therefore, the shortcomings in the work of preparing and implementing the state budget estimates need to be included in the National Assembly's Resolution on approving the 2022 state budget settlement and solutions need to be found to overcome them.

Meanwhile, delegate Pham Thi Thanh Mai (Hanoi delegation) said that it is necessary to make a comprehensive assessment of the picture of basic construction debt, which is currently showing no downward trend and has re-emerged. In 2022 alone, the State Audit report showed that more than 4 trillion VND in basic construction debt was discovered.

“If this issue is not thoroughly resolved, new debt will arise,” delegate Pham Thi Thanh Mai noted.

According to the delegate, enterprises have had to borrow capital from banks to carry out public investment projects. The Ministry of Finance has made great efforts to promote the completion volume for enterprises, however, many investors have not really joined forces with contractors to resolve difficulties.

"If we do not clarify responsibilities, this situation will continue to happen," warned the Hanoi delegation.

Large-scale resource transfer mainly to accumulate salary reform

Explaining to the National Assembly, Finance Minister Ho Duc Phoc said that among the budget transfers from 2022 to 2023, the budget for salary reform is the largest, at VND432,350 billion (accounting for 37.7%).

In addition, there are also expenditures such as development investment expenditure of VND 313,165 billion, accounting for 27.3%; increased revenue and expenditure savings of VND 287,374 billion, accounting for 25%; expenditures supplemented by competent authorities after September 30 of VND 20,379 billion, accounting for 1.8%; expenditures assigned to public service units and state agencies of VND 9,986 billion, accounting for 0.87%; scientific research expenditure of VND 4,160 billion and expenditures for equipment procurement...

“The high amount of expenditure carried over from 2022 to 2023 is mainly due to the resources transferred according to the provisions of law, especially the accumulated resources over a number of years to implement salary reform, which plays a big role,” the Minister of Finance said.

In addition, there are also subjective reasons from budget spending units, who are not resolute in implementing the budget, many tasks that are not fully spent must be transferred to the following year. Minister Ho Duc Phoc said that the Ministry of Finance, ministries, branches and localities need to try to make payments within the year, so that the amount of transferred resources is reduced.

The high amount of expenditure carried over from 2022 to 2023 is mainly due to the resources transferred according to the provisions of law, especially the resources accumulated over a number of years to implement salary reform playing a large role.

Minister Ho Duc Phoc

Regarding the issue of basic construction debt mentioned by delegate Pham Thi Thanh Mai, Minister Ho Duc Phoc informed that through synthesis, the debt of central ministries and branches is very little, while the debt of localities, especially provincial and district budgets, is high.

"Because when arranging the medium-term public investment plan, payments for projects may be insufficiently arranged, omitted, or not arranged at all, but medium-term public investment may be arranged for new projects. Old projects, although completed, are not arranged. Therefore, the People's Council and People's Committee at all levels must control this," the Minister said.

The second reason, according to the Minister, is that there are projects with shortcomings in investment procedures, requiring adjustments to investment policies and total investment, but not in a timely manner, so local budgets are not allocated in a timely manner.

The third problem is that when the construction volume is completed, the construction price list is created, but it has not been sent to the People's Committees at all levels to determine whether it is a debt or the completed projects have been approved for settlement but have not been proposed for arrangement in the medium-term public investment plan.

In the response, Minister Ho Duc Phoc said that the Ministry of Finance would like to receive the opinions of National Assembly delegates at the group discussion and the hall to continue to perfect solutions for better budget management and operation and complete the budget settlement work.


According to nhandan.vn