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

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

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

The draft Law on Public Investment (amended) proposes regulations on the order and procedures for deciding on investment policies for projects implemented in the areas of 2 or more provincial or district-level administrative units. It is proposing that the People's Committees at all relevant levels be responsible for agreeing on a plan to assign 1 People's Committee of 1 of the 2 administrative units to be the competent authority to implement the project and report to the People's Council at the same level for approval of the policy.

Mr. Tran Nhat Minh - full-time delegate of Nghe An delegation said that the drafting agency needs to clarify the regulation on reporting to the People's Council for approval, which administrative unit's People's Council (the unit with the People's Committee as the project's implementing authority or the remaining unit) to avoid problems during implementation.

Delegate Tran Nhat Minh also said that the draft Law has not taken into account the option of which agency will handle the case if two local schools cannot reach an agreement; this is an issue that needs to be researched and supplemented.

According to the proposed regulations in the draft law on the order of preparation, approval and assignment of medium-term public investment plans using state budget capital, at the year-end session of the fifth year of the National Assembly's term, the Government shall submit to the National Assembly a draft medium-term public investment plan for the following period for the National Assembly to comment. Based on the comments of the previous National Assembly, the Government shall submit to the new National Assembly for consideration and decision on the medium-term public investment plan.

Thus, according to delegate Tran Nhat Minh, projects in the first year of the term are not yet included in the medium-term public investment plan, so he proposed adding new projects starting construction in the first year of the medium-term public investment plan to the group that does not have a plan in the medium-term public investment.

Also related to the draft Law on Public Investment (amended), delegate Nguyen Van Chi - Vice Chairman of the Finance and Budget Committee of the National Assembly, delegate of Nghe An delegation expressed concern when the draft Law proposed to remove the requirement for capital appraisal; while this is the "soul of the 2014 Law on Public Investment" to help handle the situation of granting many investment policies but not fully allocating, fragmenting capital allocation causing waste that happened before 2014.

Along with that, the delegates also pointed out a series of current difficulties in public investment such as: Slow implementation and disbursement of capital, slow allocation of capital plans; having capital plans but project procedures not yet completed; allocating capital to projects that are not feasible; constantly having to submit to competent authorities to adjust capital allocation plans including medium-term and annual ones; annual revenue increase capital sources are also very slow to be allocated, and the cause of the above limitations is basically due to poor investment preparation.

Believing that the amendments to the current Law on Public Investment must resolve the above problems, delegate Nguyen Van Chi expressed concern that the draft Law does not have the content to resolve that key issue.

Therefore, the delegate said that it is necessary to consider amending the current Law on Public Investment in a single session, and only amending and supplementing a number of articles that have clearly assessed policy impacts.

Also at the discussion session, delegates Nguyen Van Chi and Tran Nhat Minh also expressed their opinions on other contents of the draft Law on Public Investment (amended) and the draft Law on 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 Administration and the Law on National Reserves.