HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam's premier on Tuesday vowed to battle double-digit inflation and asked the national assembly to formally lower the country's 2008 economic growth target from 8.5 to 7.0 percent.
The communist government's key goals were to "curb inflation, stabilize the economy and ensure social security and sustainable development," Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung told the opening session of the assembly.
Economic growth hit 8.5 percent in 2007 but slowed to an annualised 7.4 percent for this year's first quarter as high food and energy prices drove up consumer prices 21.4 percent in April over the same month last year.
Inflation and a ballooning trade deficit "seriously threaten macroeconomic stability" and are "affecting jobs, incomes and the lives of the people," Dung told the start of the month-long legislative session.
Vietnam this week announced fresh measures to rein in the money supply and bring down prices, by limiting credit growth through tighter lending for consumers and investors on the stock and property markets.
On the fiscal side, said Dung, the government must tighten spending after public outlays reached five percent of growth domestic product last year, with too much money being spent on inefficient state projects.
The 493-member assembly, in which over 90 percent of deputies are Communist Party members, was also set to pass about a dozen laws, including bills paving the way for Vietnam to start building its first nuclear power plant by 2015.
The third session of the 12th National Assembly, which was expected to sit until early June, was scheduled to pass a law allowing foreigners to buy and own property in Vietnam.
Also on the agenda was a proposal to increase the size of the capital city Hanoi by swallowing up all or parts of several neighbouring provinces, in a bid to streamline urban growth and city planning.
Legislators were sitting in a Hanoi defence ministry building as the former Ba Dinh Hall has been demolished to make way for a new assembly hall.
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