National Assembly to supervise cost-efficiency

Minister of Finance Hồ Đức Phớc speaks at the NA meeting yesterday morning. — VNA/VNS Photo

The National Assembly will carry out supervision on cost efficiency and wastefulness as part of its supervisory programme next year, the deputies have agreed.

The NA deputies reviewed outcomes of cost-cutting in 2020 during their working session on Monday morning.

According to Minister of Finance Hồ Đức Phớc, thrift and wastefulness cover a large area including wasting the State budget, State resources, slow progress and wasting investment on projects. He said there were missed opportunities on cost-cutting and international commitments were not being bet.

Tightening discipline was the key to preventing wastefulness, he added.

“The Ministry of Finance always considers completing laws and making adjustments to legal documents as a breakthrough to develop,” he said.

In 2020, more than 6,000 inspections in the administrative sector and more than 181,000 inspections of specialised fields were conducted nationwide, detecting violations costing VNĐ86 trillion.

The ministry removed 16 district-level units, 546 commune-level units and dozens of thousands of other units in an effort to improve efficiency.

NA deputies agreed that in spite of the pandemic, cost-efficiency and wastefulness prevention work was still positive in 2020.

The work has mobilised additional sources from the State budget, businesses and community for coronavirus prevention and control in difficult situations.

However, many deputies said the report was too general without specific statistics.

The report needs to point out examples of ministries and localities that did not perform well, the NA deputies said.

Others proposed reorganising the system and applying information technology in administrative management to reduce problems, and save time and money for people and businesses. — VNS