Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc speaks at a meeting of the Government cabinet. — Photo VGP

 HÀ NỘI — Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc has signed a decision promulgating the Government’s master plan on thrift practice and wastefulness combat.

The decision described the master plan as important to creating resources to help address consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, and climate change, recover and develop the economy, and realise socio-economic targets for 2021.

The master plan underlines the task of tightening financial and budgetary discipline; expanding the tax base; enhancing management over tax collection; drastically carrying out solutions to tax losses, transfer pricing, and tax arrears; and strictly controlling the State budget overspending.

It points out the need to continue restructuring the State budget spending towards effectiveness and sustainability, ensure a reasonable balance between saving and spending, increase spending on development investment, reducing the sum for frequent expenditure, and ensure adequate expenditure on human development, social security, defence, and security purposes.

The master plan requests strict compliance with the principle of budget transparency, thorough thrift practice and wastefulness prevention right from the stage of setting up tasks, proactive review of policies and tasks to remove overlapping or inefficient ones, and arrangement of items of expenditure according to their level of priority and feasibility in 2021.

This programme emphasises serious review of the plans using ODA capital and concessional loans provided by foreign sponsors, removal of unnecessary or poor-performing projects, arrangement of foreign-sourced public funds for the projects carried out on schedule, and no provision of funding from foreign loans for regular expenditure.

It also urges accelerated disbursement and effective use of public investment capital, which must be viewed as an important political task for stimulating production, business, and consumption, creating jobs, and guaranteeing social security.

Wage policy and social insurance reforms, apparatus re-organisation, and staff streamlining are also among solutions to practise thrift and prevent wastefulness under the master plan.

Regarding public asset management and use, it highlights the need to review and re-organise public assets, especially housing and land, to ensure that they are used for right purposes and in line with regulations, resolutely revoke assets used in wrong ways, and handle assets in accordance with law. It also orders serious adherence to legal regulations on the sale and transfer of public assets, as well as stringent settlement of violations. — VNS