HANOI, July 7 (Xinhua) -- "Vietnam needs great efforts and determination to realize its economic growth target of 6.7 percent in 2016," the country's National Financial Supervisory Commission (NFSC) said in its recent report sent to the government.
According to the report on the NFSC's website on Thursday, Vietnam's economic growth in short-term has been going down due to economic cycle factors and decline in the total supply, which has been resulted further from drought, natural disasters and plunging world oil prices.
Measures to support aggregate demand and make up the decline of the total supply are called for, including speeding up disbursement of development investment, and expanding export markets, the commission proposed.
Specifically, the country should strive to have credit growth hit 16-18 percent in 2016.
In a recent interview with local Vietnam News, an edition of Vietnam's news agency VNA, senior economist Truong Dinh Tuyen, former head of Vietnamese negotiation delegation for entry into the World Trade Organization, said budget imbalances and swelling public debt were factors confronting Vietnam's gross domestic product (GDP) growth.
Tuyen, who is also government's consultant in negotiation to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, added that bad debt is not being resolved properly while possible hikes in loan rates are expected this year.
This would have impacts on domestic companies, especially among small and medium-sized enterprises.
The economist proposed the government focus on macro-economic stabilization and avoid taking a pro-growth stance.
He suggested that a GDP growth rate of 6.5 percent was reasonable for Vietnam in 2016.
Sharing the same view with Tuyen, head of Vietnam's General Statistics Office Nguyen Bich Lam said it would be very hard to meet the economic growth target set for this year if the government and local authorities do not take more drastic actions.
In order to meet the annual GDP target, Lam suggested the government and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development adopt more effective measures in a timely manner to help the agriculture, forestry and fishery industry overcome their difficulties and achieve higher growth in the second half of this year.
While Vietnam has set a 6.7 percent GDP growth target in 2016, the World Bank has forecast that the country's GDP growth will stay at 6.2 percent.
