HANOI, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Vietnamese government has urged ministries and sectors to ensure that this year's price growth will be lower than the targeted economic growth of 8.5 percent, local newspaper Labor reported Monday.

    In a meeting with them on Sunday, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung asked the Industry and Commerce Ministry to ensure that there would be no shortage of such essential goods as food, foodstuff, medicine and petroleum. He agreed with a proposal on lowering prices of petroleum products.

    Vietnam's consumer price index stood at 6.19 percent in the first seven months of 2007, according to the country's General Statistics Office. The country recorded economic growth of 7.87 percent in the first half of this year, compared with 7.36 percent in the same period last year.

    Under a recent government resolution, Dung instructed ministries, sectors and localities to center on keeping on reforming pricing management mechanisms, especially those on essential goods, and preventing speculation and trade frauds.

    The prime minister also asked them to speed up the disbursement of capital for infrastructure development projects, especially state-funded ones, adjusted agricultural structure to avoid diseases, plan animal slaughtering networks, and stamping out disease outbreaks among poultry and humans.