Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has called for greater efforts to restart the national economy with the aim of achieving a GDP growth rate of over 5 percent and keeping inflation under 4 percent this year.

Vietnam's export value saw a year-on-year increase of 4.7 percent to an estimated 82.9 billion USD in the first four months of this year, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).

Vietnam exported 415.7 million face masks worth 63.19 million USD from January 1 to April 19, according to the General Department of Customs.

The retail prices of petrol were revised downwards on April 28 for the eighth time this year as a result of the latest review of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Finance.

The National Payment Corporation of Vietnam (NAPAS) and the Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) on April 16 announced a COVID-19 discount programme for businesses providing transportation services.

The garment industry was suffering an unprecedented crisis due to COVID-19, but the pandemic also brought significant opportunities for Vietnam to become the world’s face mask factory.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are finding it difficult to access the Government's credit package worth 250 trillion VND (10.7 billion USD) to support those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic because of a lack of trust in their ability to repay.

The Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) has reported that its exploitation of crude oil in the first quarter of 2020 exceeded the target by 10 percent.

Around 500 tonnes of Vietnamese products, including coffee, instant noodle, sweet potato, cabbage, pineapple, watermelon, and dragon fruit, were exported to Singapore in March, according to the Vietnamese Commercial Affair Office in Singapore.

While Vietnam remains significantly exposed to the COVID-19 outbreak and the ongoing turbulence in the global financial markets, its economy stays resilient to external shocks in the first few months of 2020, according to the World Bank (WB).

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ordered a halt of signing new rice-exporting contracts, the Government Office said in a latest document concerning this matter.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) has made all of its 292 public administrative services online, 166 of which are level-3 and -4 services while the remainders are level-2, according to the ministry's Vietnam e-Commerce and Digital Economy Agency.