Hanoi  - Vietnam's only independent domestic economic think tank has closed because of a new regulation limiting the activities of scientific and technical organizations, the group's head said Tuesday.

A statement on the website of the Institute for Development Studies said it was closing down because of a prime ministerial decision that went into effect Tuesday.

The decision includes a list of 317 topics that scientific and technical organizations are allowed to study and bars them from publishing results bearing on government policies.

"If a scientific or technical organization has opinions commenting on the guidelines or policies of the [Vietnamese Communist] Party or the state," the decision states, "it must send them to authorized party or state bodies and is not permitted to publish them under the organization's name."

"We would have to work in a very narrow field prescribed by the decision, and we see that the umbrella is closed too tight for us," said economist Nguyen Quang A, the institute's president. "So it's better to close the operation."

The institute has criticized the government's handling of macroeconomic affairs, including its further economic stimulus plans.

"It is impossible to limit the right to do research on life into a list, no matter how long the list is," the group stated on its website. "Such provisions will bind the hands of scientists who study independently."

Quang A said the researchers affiliated with the group would continue to work and publish independently as freelancers.

Many organizations in Vietnam have expressed concern over the new regulation's limitations on research and free speech. Because Vietnamese law mandates that all organizations must be affiliated with an authorized government body, many civil society groups are incorporated through the Vietnam Union of Scientific and Technical Associations and are thus covered by the new regulation.

The regulation does not apply to independent educational organizations in Vietnam, which also carry out some research. These include the Harvard-affiliated Fulbright Economics Teaching Program and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology's campus in Ho Chi Minh City.

But Quang A said the rule would have a broad chilling effect.

"It limits, not only economic progress, but the social development of Vietnam too," Quang A said. "It's very harmful." (dpa)