VINACHEM

The National Financial Supervisory Commission (NFSC) reduced its forecast of inflation to below 2 % while forecasting gross domestic product (GDP) growth at 6.5 % for 2015.

Those expectations were the important contents of the commission's report on the domestic economy in September and the first nine months of this year released by the commission on October 1.

The commission said that in the first nine months, the inflation reduced to zero against the same period of last year but the core inflation - excluding prices of rice, fresh food, energy and goods that are managed prices by the State such as health and education services – still had growth at 2.4 %.

The core inflation had a stable growth rate at 2.4 % for the past seven months, the commission said.

Director of the General Statistics Office (GSO) Nguyen Bich Lam said the current core inflation of around 2 to 3 % was at a reasonable rate. The rate has made provisions for stabilisation of the macro-economy and sustainable growth of the domestic economy, she said.

Meanwhile, the world economy had many changes in the third quarter of this year but those changes did not affect the growth of the local economy, and the GDP growth rate in the first nine months still reached 6.5 % against the same period last year.

Therefore, it retained its forecast of GDP growth rate at 6.5 % for the entire year.

The main reasons for the rise in the national GDP are growth of the industrial and construction sector, especially processing and manufacturing industries, the commission said.

In the first nine months of this year, the GDP growth of the industrial and construction sector reached 9.57 %, doubling against the growth rate in the same period of last year. Meanwhile, the GDP growth was unchanged for the service sector and reduced to 2.08 % for the farming, forestry and fishery sector from 2.94 % in the first nine months of 2014.

The index of industrial production (IIP) in the first nine months also rose 9.8 %, higher than the growth rate of 6.3 % in the same period of last year, while, the processing and manufacturing sector gained a growth rate of IIP at 10.2 % compared with 8.2 % in the first nine months of 2014.

In addition, business confidence of investors and consumers at a higher level in recent months showed positive trends in local economic growth, the commission said.

The oil prices reduced in the world markets, but the domestic economy recovered in all sectors, while balance of import and export and collection of tax have still to be ensured, it said.