Final article: Need participation of districts, cities and towns
Currently, 5 professional auction organizations in our province (Property Auction Center (under the Department of Justice), Lottery Company, Phu Quy Auction Joint Stock Company, Nghe An Auction Joint Stock Company and Nghe An Auction Company Limited) are newly established and have been in operation for a short time, so they lack experience in conducting auctions. The number of auctioneers is limited (currently there are only 8 auctioneers) and these organizations are all located in Vinh City, leading to the need to authorize the People's Committee of the commune where the land is sold to collect documents, deposits, and auction participation fees. This is not in accordance with the provisions of the law and causes difficulties for auction participants, so the payment of deposits to unsuccessful bidders is slow. According to the Department of Justice, due to this way of doing things, there is a phenomenon that after organizing the completion of the land use rights auction, some communes "soak" the deposits for more than 1 month before returning them to auction participants.
Good implementation of land use rights auction after model conversion will facilitate the construction process.
A pressing issue in the recent land use rights auctions is the situation of “land brokers” and auction participants for personal gain, causing some land lots to increase in price or the auction to fail. Mr. Nguyen Dinh Tien - Vice Chairman of the People's Committee of Cua Lo Town said: “Cua Lo Town has contracts with two professional auction organizations, Phu Quy Auction Joint Stock Company and Nghe An Auction Joint Stock Company, to conduct land auctions in the area. At times, each auction session has many land “brokers” and hundreds of people registering to bid, making it complicated and chaotic, and there is also a phenomenon of price manipulation pushing up land prices… Because the auction organizer cannot ensure security and order, Cua Lo Town has to mobilize security forces to protect and restore order in the land auction area”.
Through research, it is known that according to regulations, 1 person can only register 1 lot in the planning area, but has the right to participate in the auction of no more than 3 lots in that planning area (if the first registered lot has not won the auction) and pay the deposit and auction fee for the following lots. This has created conditions for those who participated in the auction of the first lot that did not win the auction (not having the need to buy land for housing but buying land for the purpose of "land brokering") to have time to negotiate the purchase and sale, causing complications in the auction. This issue needs to be resolved promptly to ensure social security and order and the rights of those who participate in the auction who have a real need to buy land.
During the process of land use rights auction, professional auction organizations encountered difficulties in coordinating with local authorities. Some district leaders authorized the Department of Natural Resources and Environment or the Department of Finance to participate, while some districts only assigned specialists from relevant departments to coordinate.
Mr. Pham Van Hoa - Director of the Property Auction Service Center (Department of Justice) added: "Because the auction of land use rights has been transferred to professional auction organizations, the auction work in some districts has not received due attention. During the implementation process, there has been no attention and coordination from the Finance Department and the Department of Natural Resources and Environment, so when liquidating and paying contracts, there is often a lack of consensus, causing difficulties for the liquidation and payment of contracts".
It is known that in some localities there are no auction operators, so the process of operating auctions by professional auction organizations makes it difficult to identify and monitor the actual auction participants with those who have registered for the auction in the records, difficult to identify and evaluate family members and relatives of auction participants... creating conditions for many "brokers" to appear. Another difficulty for professional auction organizations is that the psychology of auction participants is not really secure when having to pay the deposit to the auction organization (previously paid to the district or commune), or still wondering about the auction process and procedures...
The auction of land use rights to professional auction organizations is a new model of operation, so in the coming time, propaganda work needs to be focused on so that people understand the regulations on land use rights auctions and the policy of socialization in asset auction activities, while creating trust in professional auction organizations. Along with that, local authorities need to really get involved, creating favorable conditions for professional auction organizations to perform well the auction work in accordance with the provisions of law. In particular, competent agencies should regularly organize inspections of this field to promptly rectify and handle limitations and backlogs in land use rights auctions.
Hoang Vinh