Cabinet meeting: Greater efforts needed to achieve minimum of 6.7% growth in 2018At a regular government meeting in Hanoi on April 2, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc asked cabinet members to expand upon growth scenarios for 2018 in the aim of reaching a growth rate of at least 6.7%. Regarding socio-economic performance in the first quarter of 2018, the PM said that some basic indicators yielded strong results, with GDP in the first quarter reaching its highest growth rate in many years at 7.38%. The industry and construction sectors grew by 9.7%, more than double the rate of the corresponding period in 2017. Average CPI in the first quarter of 2018 soared by 2.66% over the same period last year. The Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) of Vietnam hit 51.6 points in March as announced by Nikkei on April 2, Phuc said.