Inadequate regulations on irrigation fee collection!

(Baonghean) -On March 7, 2012, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development coordinated with the Ministry of Finance to hold a nationwide meeting to collect opinions from localities, companies managing, exploiting and protecting irrigation works, and policy makers to agree on increasing the irrigation fee compensation price as a basis for amending Decree 115 to submit to the Government for signing.In my opinion, some contents in Decree 115 need to be reviewed and amended to be suitable to reality.

Firstly, in the Ministry of Finance's Instruction No. 36/2009/TT - BTC on the implementation of a number of articles of Decree 115 in Part II, Section 2: For the land and water surface areas that households and individuals contract with enterprises and forestry farms, they are not exempted from irrigation fees. In fact, in Yen Thanh district, the farms and farms that previously operated with full members such as workers, management apparatus... but later on, their business was not effective, their income was low and they could not make a living from their profession, so now they have almost been dissolved. The agricultural land was contracted to workers, leaving only a few managers. Therefore, these workers are actually small-scale agricultural farmers with low income and difficult lives.

Therefore, these cases are still exempted from irrigation fees. In fact, Bac Nghe An Irrigation One Member Co., Ltd. has contracted to supply water to Trinh Mon Farm in Quynh Luu District but has not collected irrigation fees. Trinh Mon Farm has made reports and submitted to provincial departments to exempt them from irrigation fees but has not been granted due to Decree 115's regulations.

Second, in the past, when making irrigation fees, mountainous areas collected less than the plains. That was the right thing to do because production in mountainous areas is more difficult, low-income people suffered many disadvantages, all irrigation service costs in mountainous areas were higher than in the plains. But when compensating irrigation fees, mountainous areas received less, which is not consistent with reality.

Therefore, the compensation for irrigation fees in mountainous areas must be higher than in the plains. That will avoid and limit the negative effects of the request-giving mechanism in localities (Irrigation fees for mountainous areas are not enough to cover costs, provinces must regulate and support).

Third, regarding irrigation fees, according to Decree No. 112 - HDBT of the Council of Ministers dated August 25, 1984, irrigation fees are collected by the volume of rice kg/ha of rice land (calculated as a percentage multiplied by crop yield). On November 28, 2003, Decree 143 was issued stipulating irrigation fees in cash based on the collection level by volume of the previous Decree 112, but the price of rice to calculate is from 1,350 VND/kg to 1,500 VND/kg.

On November 14, 2008, Decree 115 was issued and started to be implemented from 2009, the irrigation fee was adjusted from 2,800 VND/kg to 3,200 VND/kg. But now the price of rice in the market is 5,000 VND/kg. Thus, the current irrigation fee is 1.6 to 1.8 times higher than the irrigation fee in Decree 115 to be appropriate.

Le Cuong