Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc said that entering 2024, the world and domestic economies are forecast to still face many difficulties and challenges. However, the Finance sector will be determined to take advantage of the successes in 2023 and successfully complete the financial and state budget tasks in 2024. There are many solutions to help remove difficulties for businesses and promote economic growth.
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In 2023, despite facing many difficulties, the Finance sector has been proactive and determined to effectively carry out assigned tasks. According to Minister Ho Duc Phoc, some highlights in 2023 are that the import-export sector decreased by about 6.6%, the import-export turnover reached 681 billion USD, but the trade surplus still reached 25.5 billion USD. At the same time, the Government has been determined to create all favorable conditions for the business community, especially import-export enterprises, to create a growth engine for the economy.
Explaining why the budget revenue still increased when the economic growth was only 5.05%, while the Government still reduced taxes for businesses in 2023 by about VND 200,000 billion, the Minister of Finance said that the Finance sector has provided maximum support for businesses to be creative and innovative in collection methods.
Specifically, potential revenues that have not been collected for a long time, such as cross-border e-commerce platforms, in 2023, 73 foreign enterprises such as Youtube, Google, Facebook ... paid taxes to the state. In addition, the Ministry's implementation of issuing electronic invoices and strict management of electronic invoices has helped revenue to be more accurate, although taxes have been reduced, revenue has still increased. Therefore, although VAT and corporate income tax have increased, due to the strict management of tax refunds and anti-transfer pricing issues as well as connecting with data interconnected with payment initiators and invoice issuers ... has brought revenue to the state budget.
Regarding public debt, Minister Ho Duc Phoc said that if in 2021, our country's public debt was 43.1% of GDP, by early 2024, public debt would decrease to 37%, especially foreign debt to 34%, while the space assigned by the National Assembly to the Government to manage is 60%. Thus, there is still a huge space for us to mobilize public debt to serve essential infrastructure projects and infrastructure projects for future development. But those projects must promote the highest efficiency and contribute to the development of the economy in the highest way.
"Therefore, we only borrow when we can repay the debt and only borrow when we carry out the most effective projects to bring about breakthroughs and development for the country's economy," said Minister Ho Duc Phoc.
In addition, financial markets continue to be consolidated, difficulties are promptly removed and handled to develop more and more healthily, openly, and transparently, especially the corporate bond market. Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc said that in 2023, the Ministry of Finance has advised the Government to issue Resolution 08 and strengthen inspection and examination work, both creating conditions for businesses to mobilize capital and establishing order and discipline to make the financial market transparent.
Currently, the outstanding debt of corporate bonds is only 1,000,000 billion VND, equivalent to nearly 10% of GDP and is mainly issued by commercial banks. According to Minister Ho Duc Phoc, corporate bonds are a good capital mobilization channel and the Ministry has directed the construction of a separate corporate bond trading floor to ensure transparency in the market, as well as strengthen inspection work with the expectation that the separate corporate bond channel will be a channel to ensure capital mobilization in the country's economic development and solve difficulties for businesses.
“For individual corporate bonds, the strategy is to mobilize about 25%. Thus, we still have about 15-16% to be able to mobilize individual corporate bonds to serve the country's economic development, as well as to solve difficulties and develop businesses. However, activities must comply with the provisions of the law and when businesses borrow from people, they must repay them on time, to increase trust in the individual corporate bond market and thus be transparent and develop,” said Minister Ho Duc Phoc.
Sharing more about solutions to support the economy, businesses and people in 2024, Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc said that 2024 is still a difficult and challenging year. In addition to advising the Government and the National Assembly to reduce VAT for the first 6 months of 2024 from 10% to 8%, the Ministry will continue to propose reducing environmental tax on gasoline and other fees and charges, as well as reducing land rent by 3% to support businesses and the economy during difficult times.
However, to solve the difficulties for businesses, we do not only need tax reduction measures but also many other solutions, such as removing legal bottlenecks, opening up the consumer market, flexibly managing bank credit and reducing administrative procedures... Development in 2024 requires many solutions to support businesses in overcoming difficulties, along with fiscal solutions.
“In the short term, we can reduce taxes to support businesses, but in the long term, to enhance the strength of public finance to ensure low budget deficit, we must have solutions to increase public finance through stable tax solutions,” Minister Ho Duc Phoc said in the Financial Street Program on VTV8.
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