HA NOI — Viet Nam hoped to receive more effective support from the World Bank in financial aid, policy making and management experiences for its forthcoming priorities of inflation control, stabilising the macro economy and ensuring social welfare, said Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

Receiving World Bank managing director Sri Mulyani Indrawati in Ha Noi yesterday, Trong said he appreciated the group's effective support and co-operation in economic development, especially in projects of hunger elimination and poverty reduction, infrastructure construction, policy making and human resources development.

He also praised the effective co-operation of the group with relevant agencies and institutions in Viet Nam, especially the State Bank of Viet Nam.

He said that Viet Nam was focusing on three tasks, namely completing the socialist-oriented market economy system; training human resources, specially the high-quality ones; developing infrastructure.
Indrawati highly praised Viet Nam's socio-economic achievements, given the fact the country had been affected by the global financial crisis.

She also congratulated the country for coming out of a poor and less-developed status to become a middle-income country which, she said, would provide opportunities for Viet Nam to access bigger financial resources of the World Bank.

Indrawati pledged the World Bank would continue its support for Viet Nam's development targets.

On the same day, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung received Indrawati and praised the effectiveness of the World Bank's co-operation and support that had helped Viet Nam achieve socio-economic development as well as control inflation

Dung said that Viet Nam would keep priorities in controlling inflation, stabilising the macro economy, ensuring social welfare and maintaining growth at a relative rate in 2012. The implementation of economic development would exist alongside social advancement and equality, he said.

In response, Indrawati highlighted Viet Nam as one of the developing countries which had gained important economic achievements, saying that such targets in 2012 would help the country continue its development towards sustainability.

Noting that the economy in Viet Nam, like other ASEAN countries, was vulnerable to global economic changes since it depended much on exports, Indrawati said that a flexible management on financial and monetary policy framework as well as the economic restructuring were important to maintaining the sustainability of the economy in 2012.— VNS