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Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at the meeting (Photo: VNA)

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has instructed the Government to provide the maximum possible assistance to production and business activities in the context of complicated impact of the COVID-19 epidemic.

Speaking at the end of the Government’s regular February meeting on March 3, PM Phuc urged all-level authorities and sectors to closely follow the Government’s guideline of taking great caution but without being pessimistic while striving for the double targets of controlling epidemic and promoting economic growth.

He took noted of the declining growth rate of many sectors, especially tourism and aviation. Many enterprises face a shortage of materials, while unfavourable weather conditions such as drought or hailstorms in northern provinces further caused difficulties to production and people’s daily life.

To overcome the difficulties, PM Phuc urged ministries and agencies to immediately work out specific solutions and tasks to help sectors hard hit by COVID-19, particularly trade, finance, services, and import-export.

He required the immediate implementation of credit support packages worth at least 30 trillion VND (nearly 1.3 billion USD) to support enterprises and the people.

The PM underlined the goal of stabilizing macro economy, controlling inflation and promoting growth in order to counter the adverse effects from outside.

He also required relevant agencies to create more favourable conditions to attract and disburse private and foreign investment; and push forward administrative reforms and building of institutions to facilitate production and business activities.

The agriculture ministry was told to early submit a scheme to boost the export of farm produce, reduce production costs in agriculture and develop farm produce processing.

The PM demanded more drastic efforts to address the problem of IUU (Illegal, unreported, and unregulated) fishing so as to have the EU’s yellow card removed.

Besides, PM Phuc instructed accelerating a number of key projects, such as the Long Thanh international airport./.