Wrong spending, over budget by more than 88,000 billion

In the audit report on the 2015 state budget settlement, the State Audit pointed out violations that caused budget expenditures to exceed VND88,525 billion.

Reporting to the National Assembly this afternoon on the 2015 state budget settlement, State Auditor General Ho Duc Phoc said that the 2015 state budget revenue estimate is over 911,000 billion VND, the state budget expenditure estimate decided by the National Assembly is nearly 1.2 million billion VND, the settlement is over 1.26 billion VND, exceeding the estimate by 7.52%.

Of which, the settlement of development investment expenditure is more than 300,000 billion VND, an increase of 37.3% compared to the estimate and accounting for 24.4% of total state budget expenditure.

Specifically, in investment expenditure, the estimate is 225,000 billion VND, the final settlement is 308,853 billion VND, an increase of 83,853 billion VND compared to the estimate.

The Audit Agency discovered many violations and approved investment policies for a number of projects that were not based on socio-economic development plans.

State Auditor General Ho Duc Phoc. Photo: VPQH

In the appraisal work, there are still errors in determining the total investment such as the project to expand National Highway 1 through Khanh Hoa province, the Diamon Phophat factory project...; adjusting the total investment many times with large values, approving investment projects that are not in accordance with industry and regional planning; approving projects that are not in the investment plan list; implementing investment without an environmental impact assessment report...

Survey records of many projects are still incomplete and inaccurate; design records are not in accordance with technical standards and design processes; technical designs do not comply with basic designs, exceed standards or are not close to reality, leading to adjustments during construction; estimates are reviewed and appraised but still contain errors when approved.

There are exceptional cases where the total estimated value exceeds the approved total investment. For example, the project to build the new headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Me Tri, Nam Tu Liem, Hanoi) exceeded VND1,940 billion (VND5,952.6 billion/VND4,022.6 billion).

This project was not properly negotiated and the construction contract was signed without following regulations. The contract was signed knowing that the value exceeded the approved total investment by more than 666 billion VND.

Acceptance and payment work still has many errors in volume, unit price, norms or incomplete procedures and documents.

There is also the situation of acceptance and payment of uncompleted construction volume; disbursement exceeding the total investment, such as the Duyen Hai 1 Thermal Power Plant project, disbursement exceeded the total investment by more than 6,000 billion VND.

As a result of auditing 1,228 projects of ministries, central and local agencies, the State Audit Office recommended a deduction of VND 12,399 billion.

BOT still has many shortcomings

Regarding BOT projects, the State Audit Office pointed out that there are still many shortcomings: There are no criteria for selecting projects to be invested in under the BOT form; most BOT projects apply the form of appointing investors and appointing construction contractors without conducting bidding.

There are still errors in the process of determining the total investment of the project; determining the traffic volume is not consistent with reality; acceptance and payment are still incorrect; there is no mechanism to check and control the toll collection process to determine the actual traffic volume through the toll station; the distance of some toll stations does not meet the minimum regulation of 70km.

The equity contribution is not in accordance with the committed ratio; the construction progress is not guaranteed.

The State Audit Office has recommended reducing the time for collecting fees to recover capital of 27 audited projects (21 projects in 2016) compared to the original financial plan by 107.4 years, of which the project with the largest reduction is 13 years and 1 month.

Accordingly, the State Audit Office recommended that the Government direct the Ministry of Transport to add criteria for assessing the investment management capacity of transport sector projects to the regulations on evaluating and selecting investors for BOT transport projects, add a representative of a competent state agency to the BOT contract, and clearly state the responsibilities, powers, coordination mechanisms, and sanctions during project implementation.

At the same time, it is required to research and propose a mechanism to control traffic flow through the station, control actual revenue of the project to ensure publicity and transparency in the implementation of BOT traffic projects; regularly publicize and update traffic flow, capital recovery revenue, and capital recovery toll collection time of BOT projects when negotiating and signing BOT contracts.

According to VNN