Difficult to mobilize resources for North-South expressway

The implementation of the investment project to build the North-South expressway in the East, according to the Ministry of Finance's assessment, "has not demonstrated synchronous feasibility for implementation".

In addition, leaders of the Finance sector also expressed concerns about the previous proposal of the Ministry of Transport to assign the Vietnam Expressway Corporation (VEC) and Cuu Long Corporation (CIPM) to mobilize resources to invest in a number of component projects.

Difficult to choose investors?

Specifically, according to a document sent to the Government Office, the leader of the Ministry of Finance said that the total number of component projects of the above project is 20 projects, of which 11 projects will be implemented in the 2017-2020 period alone. Of these 11 projects, 8 are BOT (build-operate-transfer) projects and 3 are public investment projects.

However, the representative of the financial sector also cited the assessment of the Ministry of Transport that the bidding to select investors cannot be immediately confirmed to be successful. In fact, the transport sector has organized bidding to select investors for the Dau Giay-Phan Thiet expressway project and the Ho Chi Minh City Ring Road 3 section Tan Van-Nhon Trach,... but was not successful.

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Therefore, the transport sector leaders also recommended: In case the bidding organization cannot select an investor, site clearance will still be carried out as planned.

The Government bond capital of nearly VND42,000 billion will be implemented in the direction of investing in a number of urgent component projects in the form of public investment in the Ninh Binh-Thanh Hoa and Dau Giay-Phan Thiet sections. After public investment, the competent authorities will select investors in the form of concession of operation and exploitation; the capital collected will continue to invest in the following sections.

In addition, the leaders of the Ministry of Transport also proposed assigning VEC and CIPM, 100% state-owned corporations, to mobilize resources to invest in a number of component projects.

With the above plan of the Ministry of Transport, the leader of the Ministry of Finance said that the implementation of the North-South expressway project does not demonstrate the feasibility of synchronous implementation.

On the other hand, at present, the leaders of the financial sector frankly stated that VEC and CIPM are still very limited. In fact, the State budget is still having to make advances to repay the loans due for projects invested by VEC, some loans are being transferred to be allocated because VEC is unable to repay the debt. Meanwhile, CIPM is still mainly implementing in the form of assigning management of projects using State budget capital.

“Therefore, assigning VEC and CIPM to mobilize resources to invest in sections of the North-South Expressway project is difficult to implement,” the Ministry of Finance’s report stated.

Road use price: Two sets in opposite directions

With the above assessments, the leaders of the Ministry of Finance proposed that the Government Office report to the Prime Minister to consider not proposing the content of assigning VEC and CIPM to mobilize resources to invest in the pre-feasibility study report submitted to the National Assembly.

In addition, the agency also proposed that the Ministry of Transport be assigned to provide additional specific assessments of the financial feasibility of component projects expected to be implemented under the BOT contract form. For projects with financial plans that are difficult to implement under the PPP (public-private partnership) form, the Ministry of Finance proposed to implement them in the direction of public investment.

Regarding the proposal to bid for selecting investors in the form of concessions for operation and exploitation of public investment projects, the leaders of the Ministry of Finance requested to consider the reasonableness of the above plan. The representative of this agency said that these are projects using government bond capital, and the consideration of reasonableness is to ensure compliance with the provisions of the State Budget Law and the form of investment.

An important part that has been concerned before is the price of road use. In the contents of the project's pre-feasibility study report, the Ministry of Transport proposed that the Government report to the National Assembly for approval of the mechanism of "determining the increase in service prices right in the pre-feasibility study report and project contract; the price specified in the contract is unchanged."

Regarding the above content, the leader of the Ministry of Finance affirmed that in the documents participating in comments, this agency proposed not to include the above content in the report to the National Assembly because the above regulation is not suitable with the authority and form of regulating road use prices.

Accordingly, the representative of the Ministry of Finance requested the Ministry of Transport to be responsible to the Government and the National Assembly for the proposed road usage price for the North-South expressway project as above.

According to VietnamPlus