The National Assembly established a delegation to monitor BOT traffic for the first time.

The National Assembly Standing Committee has just issued a resolution to establish a thematic supervision team on "Implementation of legal policies on investment and exploitation of traffic works under the form of build-operate-transfer (BOT) contracts".

The distance from the toll station of the National Highway 1 expansion project, section km 597+549 - km 605+000 and section km 617+000 - km 641+000 in Quang Binh province (BOT) to the Deo Ngang tunnel toll station is only 10 km.

BOT in transportation is a content that has never been supervised by the National Assembly or the Standing Committee. And the National Assembly's Economic Committee is one of the agencies that proposed to supervise this content.

Mr. Vu Hong Thanh, member of the National Assembly Standing Committee and Chairman of the National Assembly's Economic Committee, will be the head of the delegation.

In addition to many members of the Economic Committee, the supervisory delegation also includes a vice chairman of the Finance and Budget Committee, and representatives of the National Assembly delegation of the province or centrally-run city where the delegation is supervising.

Also invited to participate in the monitoring delegation's activities were representatives of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, the Central Economic Committee, the State Audit, the Government Inspectorate, the Vietnam Automobile Transport Association, the Vietnam Bridge and Road Science and Technology Association, and the Vietnam Economic Institute...

The scope of this supervision is to supervise the implementation of policies and laws on investment, construction and exploitation of traffic works under the form of BOT contracts nationwide in the period from 2011 to 2016.

According to recent data, there are 96 BOT toll stations nationwide, planned to increase to 102 stations by 2020 and 121 BOT toll stations by 2030.

The National Assembly Standing Committee assessed that the exploitation of BOT projects in the recent past has caused many problems and anger among the people, such as: collecting high fees, increasing transportation fares, building roads in one place, collecting fees in another place to compensate for the project. Or arranging too many toll stations not according to planning, causing traffic congestion, placing stations at incorrect distances...

Project establishment, appraisal, determination of project value, capital recovery plan, capital recovery control, project exploitation, etc. are still inadequate, causing public outrage.

The purpose of monitoring is to review and evaluate the system of policies and laws on encouraging investment and exploitation of traffic works under the BOT model.

Toll stations on National Highway 1 and National Highway 14 will apply the non-stop toll collection system. Photo: D.Loan

Evaluate the implementation and organization of policies and laws related to the above content in the period from 2011 to 2016; the results achieved, especially the results of using State budget capital through government bonds for National Highway 1 and Ho Chi Minh Road in the period of 2014-2016; limitations, shortcomings and causes of limitations and shortcomings.

Through monitoring, the responsibilities of relevant ministries, branches, localities and individuals will be determined.

At the same time, propose and recommend on perfecting the system of policies and laws and solutions to improve the effectiveness of implementing policies and laws on encouraging investment and exploiting traffic works in the form of BOT, and recommend to perfect other forms of investment such as public-private partnership (PPP), build-transfer (BT)... if any.

The resolution stated that the monitoring results will be reported to the National Assembly Standing Committee at the August 2017 meeting.

The monitoring delegation was also assigned the responsibility of preparing a draft resolution to submit to the National Assembly Standing Committee for promulgation of a resolution on thematic monitoring; preparing a report of the National Assembly Standing Committee on thematic monitoring to send to National Assembly deputies at the 4th session (October 2017).

According to Nguyen Le/vneconomy