The 8th plenum of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee (CPV CC) decided to give two high-ranking party cadres disciplinary warning in connection with their involvement in recent major legal cases.

According to a communique issued on Thursday, the plenum decided to serve warnings to Cao Si Kiem, a CPV CC member, former governor of the State Bank of Vietnam, and deputy director of the CPV CC's Commission for Economic Affairs, and Ngo Xuan Loc, a CPV CC member and deputy prime minister.

The plenum, which was convened in Hanoi from November 4 to November 11, also proposed that the National Assembly relieve Ngo Xuan Loc of his post as deputy prime minister.

However, the communique gave no details of the cases.

Evaluating the implementation of the country's socioeconomic development plan for 1999, the plenum noted that in face of many difficulties and challenges, Vietnam has been able to maintain its political, economic and social stability, continued to register economic growth, harvested bumper rice crops, overfulfilled the exports plan and made progress in the hunger elimination and

poverty reduction program.

The plenum also recognized that the country has not yet been able to prevent the slowing down of the economic growth rate and the quality of economic development and the economy's competitiveness and efficiency are still low.

As for the tasks set for the year 2000, the plenum decided to make great efforts to stop the slowdown in the economic growth rate and strive for a higher economic growth rate than in 1999.

Regarding the direction for preparing documents for the Ninth Congress of CPV, the plenum agreed on the major issues to be included in the Political Report, the Socioeconomic Report and the Report on Revising the Party Statute.