Difficulties in implementing the National Target Program in Nghe An mountainous region

Problems from the grassroots

The mountainous district of Quy Chau is implementing the Project on Developing Key Agricultural Products of the District for the period 2020 - 2025, including gene conservation and development of Quy duck farming. Accordingly, households implementing the project will receive 100% support for purchasing duck breeds and 1 month of animal feed, and will be instructed on veterinary knowledge and livestock care.

However, according to the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Quy Chau district, the district is facing difficulties when by the end of November 2022, the capital source for Project 2 of the National Target Program on Sustainable Poverty Reduction and the National Target Program on New Rural Development has not been seen yet. It is known that on October 12, 2022, the Provincial People's Council issued Resolution No. 45 on the detailed allocation of investment capital rotation support for beneficiaries such as poor households, near-poor households and other subjects in project implementation. Currently, the authorities are waiting for the Provincial People's Committee and relevant departments and branches to issue documents guiding implementation.

Currently, Quy Chau district is maintaining a total flock of over 8,000 Quy ducks, many of which are supported by breeds from the National Target Program on New Rural Development. Photo: Hoai Thu

To encourage people to carry out the project items in time, Quy Chau district is "promising first, disbursing later". For now, it is mobilizing people to contribute their own capital to carry out the project first, and the government will complete the disbursement documents later. Because of this delay, many households are not interested in implementing the project.

In addition, Quy Chau also "encountered difficulties" in implementing Sub-project 1 - Developing sustainable agricultural and forestry economy associated with forest protection and increasing income for people under Project 3 of the National Target Program for Socio-Economic Development of Ethnic Minority and Mountainous Areas. Specifically, some contents do not have documents guiding the decentralization of design appraisal agencies, estimates, policy beneficiaries and regulations on types of rice to support people... Currently, the district has sent a document requesting the Provincial People's Committee to soon issue specific instructions to have a basis for implementing the sub-project items, ensuring progress and quality in accordance with regulations.

Meanwhile, Tuong Duong district is also struggling to implement contents related to forest protection work. On November 17, 2022, the People's Committee of the district issued Official Dispatch No. 1267/UBND-NN to the Provincial People's Committee, proposing to resolve a number of difficulties in the implementation of Sub-project 1 of Project 3 under the National Target Program on Socio-economic Development of Ethnic Minority and Mountainous Areas in Nghe An Province in 2022.

According to the leader of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Tuong Duong, currently, 100% of the area with natural forests under sub-project 1 has been registered to enjoy the forest environmental service payment policy. However, the district is still confused because there is no guidance on whether people can enjoy two policies at the same time (including the forest environmental service payment policy and the forest protection contract policy, forest protection support under sub-project 1) for the same protected forest area. For the subjects of forest protection contract, forest protection support, the Provincial People's Committee has allocated funds from June 30, 2022 in Decision No. 1892/QD-UBND. In fact, people have been continuously protecting forests before, so will they enjoy the support policy from January 1, 2022 to June 30, 2022 or not?

The mangrove forest in Tam Dinh commune (Tuong Duong). Photo: Thanh Cuong

Regarding the preparation of dossiers for forest protection and forest protection support, Clause 4, Article 10, Circular 15/2022/TT-BTC dated March 4, 2022 of the Ministry of Finance stipulates that "The cost of preparing dossiers for forest protection and forest protection support is VND 50,000/ha". However, there is still no guidance on whether the budget-using unit must prepare the dossier itself or hire a consulting unit to do it, so the locality is still waiting.

In response to local recommendations, while waiting for documents from relevant agencies and departments, to help the grassroots accelerate the implementation of National Target Programs and promptly disburse capital in 2022, on October 31, 2022, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development issued Official Dispatch No. 3954/SNN-PTNT to districts, cities and towns requesting localities to base on the Central Government's directive documents and the contents of the Provincial People's Council Resolutions and the Provincial People's Committee Decisions to make estimates and disburse funds in 2022.

However, localities still face difficulties as the Department of Finance has not yet regulated the support spending level for each specific item and category, so most items cannot be implemented. Therefore, by early December 2022, the province has allowed some items to postpone the disbursement deadline to 2023.

Need to ensure counterpart funding

Not only in Quy Chau and Tuong Duong, the implementation of the National Target Program on socio-economic development for ethnic minority and mountainous areas in Nghe An province in 2022 in Que Phong district is also facing difficulties.

Mr. Bui Van Hien - Vice Chairman of Que Phong District People's Committee said that the source of the National Target Program in general and the policy to support socio-economic development in ethnic minority and mountainous areas in particular, the Central and Provincial budgets must allocate capital for the district to implement. However, up to now, the above funding sources have not been disbursed because they are in the stage of completing the documents.

Upgrading National Highway 48 through Tien Phong commune, Que Phong district. Photo: Nguyen Hai

The representative of the Finance - Planning Department of Que Phong added: Que Phong is a 30a district, with 12/14 communes in area III, so the localities face many difficulties because they do not have enough resources to arrange counterpart funds. In fact, the district only has enough resources to arrange at a minimum level of 30 million VND to a maximum of 100 million VND/project and the total annual counterpart fund is only over 1 billion VND for all projects in the area. Also due to the lack of counterpart funds, in the past few years, Que Phong district has not accepted new traffic projects because according to regulations, each kilometer of mountainous road has an implementation cost of about 1.6 billion VND, but in reality, to build mountainous roads in Que Phong and Quy Chau, the cost must be nearly double (about 3 billion VND/km). With the above reality, recently, the district has issued a document proposing: For the 30A districts, the 10% of the counterpart capital that the Central Government has assigned to the local budget for arrangement, the provincial budget must always arrange because the district and commune budgets cannot meet the demand. The current situation in Que Phong district is also the common situation in many mountainous localities in the province.

Mr. Luong Van Khanh - Deputy Head of the Provincial Ethnic Minorities Committee said: Compared to before, according to the provisions of the Law on Public Investment, the local counterpart funding source must be proactively arranged from the beginning, so when the overall source is approved by the competent authority, it means that the local budget must also arrange the counterpart source.

Of the 716 projects related to ethnic policies, 20 projects with a total investment of over 15 billion VND were approved by the province, the remaining projects with a scale of less than 15 billion VND were assigned to the People's Committees of districts for approval. Currently, after being approved by the Provincial People's Committee, localities are completing procedures to select documents, contractors or organize bidding according to regulations.

Also according to the representative of the Provincial Ethnic Minorities Committee, although the capital for implementing the program has been slow, it was not until the end of October that there was a detailed plan for allocating the capital for implementation, so there was no actual implementation volume. The reason is that at the beginning of the term, along with the assessment and classification of villages, hamlets and communes according to new standards, the criteria and principles for capital allocation have also changed compared to previous years. However, thanks to good preparation of documents and investment plans, up to this point, Nghe An is one of three provinces in the country that has allocated capital to the project portfolio. In the 2021-2025 period, Nghe An was allocated 2,632.56 billion VND to implement 10 projects related to ethnic and mountainous areas. Of which, in 2022, 492.54 billion VND was allocated to implement 9 projects. If everything goes smoothly, the Provincial Ethnic Committee strives to disburse 60% of the capital allocated for target projects in 2022.

Ethnic minority and mountainous areas in Nghe An account for 83% of the province's natural area and 41% of its population; of which ethnic minorities have 491,267 people, accounting for 14.76% of the province's population. At the same time, there are 24 border communes involved in the implementation of policies for ethnic minority and mountainous areas, bordering Laos. The national target program for socio-economic development of ethnic minority and mountainous areas for the 2021-2030 period, phase I (from 2021 to 2025) is implemented in 131 communes (76 communes in area III, 55 communes in area I) and 588 extremely disadvantaged villages and hamlets; the total capital plan for 2022 is VND 874,469 billion. Of which, the central budget is 794,972 billion VND, the local budget is 79,497 billion VND.