PM Nguyen Tan Dung has asked inferior levels to employ measures to keep inflation rate at 18% this year and pull it down to 5% by 2015.

The request was made at the Government’s regular meetingin August during which the Government chief asked competent agencies to have an answer for why consumer price index (CPI) in the country is much higher than in other countries in the region.

All proposals for containing inflation and stabilizing the macro-economy in both short and long terms were discussed at this regular meeting which took place on September 25-26.

Earlier, a series of seminars were held by various ministries and agencies in September to analyze the causes of inflation and seek measures to address it.

Over the past five years, except for 2009, December’s CPI rose by 6.5% against the previous year. In the 2001 – 2010 period, the index increased 8.31% a year.

According to PM Dũng, high CPI was mainly attributed to prolonged loose monetary policy./.