Hanoi (VNA) – Deputy Minister of Finance Vo Thanh Hung on October 3 received and had a working session with Li Kouqing, Director of the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO), who led an AMRO delegation on a working 🧔visit to Vietnam.

The AMRO delegation arrived in Vietnam to assess economic and financial risks and help enhance macro-economic research, monitoring, and policy making capacity. At the event, Hung highly valued the results of the AMRO delegation’s meetings with units of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and relevant agencies and organisations. He asked AMRO to summarise information, update recently released data on the third quarter of 2023, and send the draft report to the MoF and the State Bank of Vietnam for comments to finalise the report. According to the latest statistics, the Vietnamese economy posted a growth rate of 5.33% in Q3, higher than the 3.28% in Q1 and 4.05% in Q2. The GDP growth was estimated at 4.24% during the first nine months, still larger than the same periods of 2020 and 2021. The statistics reflect a positive growth trend, he opined. The Deputy Minister recognised AMRO’s efforts to fulfil the tasks set by the ASEAN+3 finance ministers and central bank governors. He confirmed that Vietnam supports AMRO’s continued support for countries to implement the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation (CMIM) and their strategic orientations, along with the office’s development of new financial tools to assist members more effectively in the face of difficulties. He also spoke highly of AMRO’s assistance for the MoF staff to improve their research and policy making capacity in the international environment, adding that the MoF will continue creating favourable conditions for young staff members to join AMRO’s secondment programme. At the meeting, AMRO Director Li gave a brief introduction of the office’s activities since it was established by ASEAN+3 finance ministers and central bank governors in April 2011 to aid the CMIM implementation. As a regional financial organisation, AMRO has three main functions: monitoring macro-economic issues, helping with the CMIM implementation, and providing technical assistance for  member countries. Talking about AMRO’s technical support for the MoF, he noted that the office has provided assistance via the secondment programme, which is a training prorgamme for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam with the aim of creating conditions for young civil servants to improve their capacity by working at AMRO. The programme has also helped promote AMRO’s vision and capacity in member countries, boosted the cultural diversity in the office’s working environment, and enhanced AMRO relations with member countries. AMRO has received 10 cadres from the MoF coming to work under the programme since 2014, Li added. Concluding the meeting, Deputy Minister Hung expressed his hope that Li will continue leading AMRO’s efforts to fulfil its role as a regional financial organisation and effectively carry out macro-economic monitoring, support CMIM implementation, and provide technical support for ASEAN+3 member countries, including Vietnam./.