National Assembly delegates from Nghe An province discuss amendments to the Law on Public Investment.

Attending the discussion session were comrades: Do Van Chien - Member of the Political Bureau, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front; and Lieutenant General Tran Quang Phuong - Member of the Central Executive Committee of the Party, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly.

Comrade Thai Thanh Quy - Member of the Central Committee of the Party, Deputy Head of the Standing Committee of the Central Economic Committee, Chairman of the Provincial People's Council, and Head of the National Assembly Delegation of Nghe An province - presided over the meeting.

The draft Law on Public Investment (amended) proposes regulations on the procedures for deciding on investment policies for projects implemented in areas spanning two or more provincial or district-level administrative units. It suggests that the relevant People's Committees at all levels be responsible for agreeing on a plan to assign one People's Committee of one of the two administrative units as the managing agency for the project and reporting to the People's Council at the same level for approval of the policy.

Mr. Tran Nhat Minh, a delegate from Nghe An province, suggested that the drafting agency should clarify which administrative unit's People's Council (the unit whose People's Committee is the managing body for the project) should be required to report to and approve the project in order to avoid difficulties during implementation.

Representative Tran Nhat Minh also stated that the draft Law does not yet consider the issue of which agency will handle the situation if two local schools cannot reach an agreement; this is a matter that needs to be researched and supplemented.

According to the proposed regulations in the draft law on the procedures for preparing, approving, and allocating medium-term public investment plans using state budget funds, at the last session of the fifth year of the National Assembly's term, the Government will submit to the National Assembly the projected medium-term public investment plan for the following period for the National Assembly's opinion. Based on the opinion of the previous National Assembly, the Government will submit the medium-term public investment plan to the new National Assembly for consideration and decision.

Therefore, according to delegate Tran Nhat Minh, projects in the first year of the term that are not included in the medium-term public investment plan are not included in the plan. He proposed adding new projects starting in the first year of the medium-term public investment plan to the group of projects not required to be included in the medium-term public investment plan.

Also related to the draft Law on Public Investment (amended), Representative Nguyen Van Chi - Vice Chair of the National Assembly's Finance and Budget Committee, and a representative from Nghe An province, expressed concern that the draft law proposes removing the requirement for capital source appraisal; while this was the "heart of the 2014 Law on Public Investment" that helped address the situation of granting many investment approvals but failing to allocate sufficient funds, resulting in fragmented and wasteful distribution of capital, which occurred before 2014.

In addition, delegates also pointed out a series of obstacles to public investment today, such as: slow implementation and disbursement of capital, slow allocation of capital plans; capital plans exist but project procedures are not yet completed; capital is allocated to projects that are not feasible; continuous requests to competent authorities to adjust capital allocation plans, including medium-term and annual plans; and the allocation of increased annual revenue is also very slow. The root cause of these limitations is fundamentally due to inadequate investment preparation.

While acknowledging that amendments to the current Public Investment Law must address these obstacles, Representative Nguyen Van Chi expressed concern that the draft law lacks provisions to resolve this crucial issue.

Therefore, delegates suggested that consideration should be given to amending the overall Public Investment Law through a process approved within a single session, possibly only amending or supplementing certain articles whose policy impacts have been clearly assessed.

Also at the discussion session, delegates Nguyen Van Chi and Tran Nhat Minh also expressed their opinions on other contents in the draft Law on Public Investment (amended) and the draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Securities, the Law on Accounting, the Law on Independent Auditing, the Law on State Budget, the Law on Management and Use of Public Assets, the Law on Tax Management and the Law on National Reserves.