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National Assembly deputy Tran Hoang Ngan |
On the sideline of the 15th National Assembly (NA)’s fifth session today, in a talk with a reporter of Sai Gon Giai Phong newspaper, National Assembly deputy Tran Hoang Ngan said in the two years 2020-2021, the country has spent much on the Covid-19 epidemic prevention and control.
After the epidemic is under control in 2022, economic recovery and development in Vietnam followed in the wake of the Covid-19 epidemic. However, the world has seen unpredictable changes in addition to conflicts between countries which has greatly affected the Southeast Asian country’s economy.
According to Deputy Ngan, businesses have been facing difficulties since the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2022, they faced difficulties when the export market is narrowed due to the above-mentioned changes in the world; then there was the impact of inflation, energy and food crisis. Therefore, in 2022, businesses recovered yet they grew slowly in the context of the world's general difficulties.
Mr. Ngan supposed that Vietnam should have both short-term urgent solutions and long-term solutions to pull the economy through difficulties. Along with that, the government must understand which difficulties businesses are facing.
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The 15th National Assembly (NA)’s fifth session today |
Enterprises have been facing difficulties including market and capital sources, he said. In particular, exporters lost their market as the world market is wobbling when the world economy is on the decline.
Countries with populations ranging from a few tens to hundreds of millions of people control their economic openness moderately meanwhile, the openness of Vietnam’s economy is very large. This is a risk factor because, with large openness, Vietnam will be under many external influences.
Therefore, Vietnam should control its economic openness which must be under serious consideration to build an independent and self-reliant economy.
The export market is narrow while the domestic market depends on the purchasing power of residents. Worse, residents’ financial resources have been reduced after 2 years of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Businesses are bumping into difficulties in accessing to capital. Banks still lend to businesses, but not many of businesses can satisfy the requirements to get loans. Banks also do not dare to lend to businesses that failed to meet the requirements.
Currently, the credit balance is very low, showing that the ability to provide capital for the economy is there. Banks also want to lend money because keeping money is like "holding a burning coal in your hand" because banks are keeping people’s money and paying interest to depositors. However, banks do not dare to risk subprime lending because if loans are not safe, they will lose capital.
Therefore, to help businesses meet the loan conditions, it is necessary to develop a credit guarantee fund for small and medium-sized enterprises. This fund should be established from the budget capital and taxes. This fund will provide credit guarantees for enterprises to borrow money for maintaining operations, production and business.
In addition to creating supply, it is necessary to pay attention to the domestic market of 100 million people in the context of the difficult export market.
Most importantly, the Government must have social security policies and finance people. For instance, it is particularly necessary to add a package to support poverty-stricken households, unemployed people, laid-off workers, households whose breadwinners lost jobs due to the Covid-19 epidemic, and orphans who lost at least one parent to the coronavirus.
Last but not least, the financial market should be strengthened for healthy development, helping businesses to issue stocks and bonds to raise capital on the market, because firms can’t depend solely on capital from banks.
National Assembly deputy Tran Hoang Ngan said that Vietnam must have a long-term solution to restructure the economy to improve independence and autonomy; thus, it must reduce the openness of the economy both short-term solutions and long-term solutions.
