The ministry added that it intends to use 447 million USD from divestments from state owned enterprises to balance the state budget.
Despite Vietnam's state budget collection increasing 2.1 billion USD, the total budget deficit still reached 1.3 billion USD due to the falling oil prices. The Ba Ria-Vung Tau Department of Taxation’s budget dropped 806 million USD alone due to falling oil prices and 492 million USD due to a tax drop from businesses in the oil and gas industry.
Vung Tau Province has over 7,000 businesses and most of them operate in petroleum industry. Therefore, the falling price of crude oil means these businesses have faced difficulties and the provincial budget has also decreased.
A representative from the Ministry of Finance said that the state budget collection still increased 7% year-on-year, equal to 761 million USD. However, the amount of exceeded provincial collection should be used by local authorities. The ministry intended to use the budget from divestments of state owned enterprises to offset falling government revenue.
According to the Ministry of Finance, The government believes it can recover 1.5 billion USD from 3.4 billion USD in outstanding tax arrears The ministry will look at ways to increase revenues and ease the budget deficit in the coming time.
