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The budget has spent more than VND 128 trillion to fight the pandemic
Speaking at the recent forum "Financial policy dialogue to support the Socio-economic recovery and development program", Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc said that over the past time, the state budget expenditure has been strictly managed, thoroughly thrifty, and both central budgets and local budgets have prioritized arrangement for Covid-19 pandemic prevention and control, ensuring life for people.
To ensure funding for the purchase of Covid-19 vaccines, the Ministry of Finance has submitted to the Government to submit to the National Assembly, the National Assembly Standing Committee to arrange funding from savings sources (through cutting recurrent expenditures) and the remaining budget of the central budget in 2020 with the amount of VND 14.62 trillion to focus on spending on the prevention of the Covid-19 pandemic; allowing localities to use the remaining salary reform source to spend on Covid-19 pandemic prevention and control in 2021 and 2022. At the same time, it has submitted to the Government and Prime Minister to establish a Vaccine Fund to mobilize additional funding for this mission.
According to statistics of the Ministry of Finance, from the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic to the end of the first quarter of 2022, the state budget has spent about 128.5 trillion dong on the prevention of the Covid-19 pandemic and supporting people in difficulty, of which the central budget has spent about VND 31.5 trillion and the localities have spent about VND 97 trillion. Along with that, promptly provided supplies and equipment for national reserve for pandemic prevention and control; supply about 222.4 thousand tons of national reserve rice to support people to overcome consequences of natural disasters and pandemics.
In addition, in the context of a decline in private investment, the acceleration of disbursement of public investment resources will make an important contribution to stimulating social investment demand and maintaining the growth momentum of the economy. The Ministry of Finance has ensured sufficient resources to fully and promptly meet the disbursement schedule for public investment tasks. Along with speeding up capital disbursement, the Government has requested ministries, branches and localities to thoroughly save investment spending, making an important contribution to promoting economic growth.
Recently, Deputy Prime Minister Le Minh Khai signed and issued a public letter to the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the Chairman of the People's Committees of the provinces and centrally-run cities on the allocation and use of revenue growth, saving state budget expenditure in 2021.
The Deputy Prime Minister asked the People's Committees of provinces and centrally run cities to uphold the spirit of self-reliance and step up the implementation of solutions to increase revenue and save expenses (especially non-business expenditures of an investment nature), actively use local resources to perform socio-economic development tasks in the locality; in which, using sources to increase revenue and save local budget expenditures in accordance with the provisions of the State Budget Law and relevant legal provisions, and arrange for local investment projects must ensure the spirit of focused, effective, absolutely no fragmented or divided investment, contributing to promoting quick recovery and sustainable socio-economic development.
The more difficult it is, the more it is important to save
In 2022, it is forecasted that there will still be many difficulties and challenges, which will have a great impact on the economic recovery and development of businesses, people and the economy, it is necessary to have timely support policies to businesses, people and the economy. Therefore, in addition to boosting budget revenue, the finance sector also synchronously deploys solutions to effectively and thoroughly save state budget expenditures.
In the context of declining state budget revenue (both under pressure from the decline in production and business of enterprises and reduced revenue due to the implementation of support solutions), while still having to ensure the demand for state budget expenditures for recurrent activities, ensuring capital for development investment and especially increasing spending on social security, spending on disease prevention... has created a big challenge for the balance sheet of the state budget.
In directing and operating, the Ministry of Finance suggested that budget levels must spend the state budget closely and thriftily. At the same time, speeding up the disbursement of public investment capital creates a driving force for economic growth; thoroughly save recurrent expenditures, cut expenses that are not really necessary, slow to implement; cut unimportant recurrent expenditures to supplement the reserve sources of the central and local budgets for Covid-19 pandemic prevention and control. For localities, the Ministry of Finance requires provinces to proactively arrange, cut, and relax unnecessary spending tasks, in addition, if revenue is reduced, expenses must be reduced accordingly.
In order to restructure state budget expenditure, the Ministry of Finance has stepped up in the direction of increasing the proportion of investment and development expenditures, gradually reducing the proportion of recurrent expenditures on the basis of reorganizing the apparatus, reducing the payroll for the public sector. At the same time, thoroughly save the recurrent expenditures of the state budget from the stage of assigning estimates to focus on development investment, towards the goal of gradually reducing the recurrent proportion in the total state budget expenditure.
