Vietnam finance ministry loses $56.6mn to cover gov’t-backed debts: audit report
Vietnam finance ministry loses $56.6mn to cover gov’t-backed debts: audit report
The amount of money Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance had to earmark to cover the government-backed debts of loss-making state-run enterprises has been on the rise, according to a recently released audit report.
In 2012 the finance ministry spent more than VND1.2 trillion (US$56.6 million) on clearing the government-guaranteed debts owed by five projects, the State Audit Office of Vietnam said in its 2013 report.
This was a 100 percent increase from the VND600 billion debt-paying amount the finance ministry had to earmark to help the loss-ridden enterprises in 2011, the report said.
Three of the projects whose debts were covered by the finance ministry belong to the cement industry. The other two are a pulp mill and a hydropower plant.
As of the beginning of this year, the government has guaranteed $1.67 billion worth of foreign loans for 16 cement projects, according to the Agency for Debt Management and External Finance under the Ministry of Finance. The total outstanding loans of these projects are $564 million.
The government also backed $7.2 billion worth of foreign loans for the country in 2013, up nearly 30 percent from a year earlier, according to the audit report.
tuoitrenews
