230,000 billion VND for North-South Expressway: Too much resource for transportation?

Examining the Government’s report on the medium-term public investment plan for the 2016-2020 period, the Chairman of the National Assembly’s Finance and Budget Committee requested a separate report on the North-South Expressway project. The project, according to the submission, has a budget of approximately VND230,000 billion.

Chairman of the Finance and Budget Committee Nguyen Duc Hai requested the Government to send a separate report on the North-South Expressway project (with an estimated investment cost of up to VND230,000 billion).

Chairman of the Finance and Budget Committee Nguyen Duc Hai requested the Government to send a separate report on the North-South Expressway project (with an estimated investment cost of up to VND230,000 billion).

The project to build the North-South Expressway (Eastern route), Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City section by 2020, was submitted by the Ministry of Transport to the Prime Minister for approval of an investment program with a budget of about 230,000 billion VND, of which the investor mobilized 136,000 billion VND and the State supported nearly 94,000 billion VND (accounting for 40.7%).

This is one of the projects in the medium-term public investment plan for the 2016-2020 period.

Examining the Government's report, the Finance and Budget Committee emphasized that this is a very large-scale project with regional impacts and needs to be presented separately to the National Assembly for consideration.

Chairman Nguyen Duc Hai summarized and suggested that in the context of limited resources, investment in the North-South Expressway (Eastern route) should be calculated based on actual resources, divided into phases and prioritizing investment in urgent sections and routes first.

In the general context, through supervision, the auditing agency clearly stated that the investment capital for the transport sector in the period of 2011-2015, especially government bond capital, accounted for a relatively large proportion and the capital expected to be allocated in the period of 2016-2020 for this sector was also quite high compared to other sectors while investment capital for the agricultural sector had not yet reached the set target, investment capital for the health sector was still limited.

The audit agency believes that investment in transport infrastructure is necessary, but devoting too large a proportion of investment resources to transport has led to a reduction in investment resources for other areas, causing an imbalance in socio-economic development.

Therefore, the Finance and Budget Committee recommends that the Government balance investment resources between economic infrastructure development and social infrastructure, ensuring harmony between fields, regions, and localities.

This agency also requested the Government to direct localities to closely coordinate in the process of building and proposing plans for capital allocation and use for projects with regional and territorial connectivity, avoiding fragmentation and lack of connection in proposing and building investment plans./.

According to Dan Tri