Building new rural areas: 'Chasing achievements leads to mobilizing people beyond their capacity'

The monitoring report of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly stated that in the construction of new rural areas, some localities showed signs of chasing achievements, thus mobilizing people beyond their capacity.

Chairman of the Economic Committee Nguyen Van Giau

On the morning of May 25, at the 48th session, the National Assembly Standing Committee listened to and commented on the report on the initial monitoring results of the implementation of the national target program on new rural construction (2010-2015 period) associated with restructuring the agricultural sector.

The report presented by Chairman of the Economic Committee Nguyen Van Giau stated: By December 31, 2015, the whole country had 1,526 communes, accounting for 17.1% of the total number of communes meeting the new rural criteria, and by March 2016, there were 1,761 communes, accounting for 19.7%, meeting the new rural criteria.

Regarding the capital source for implementing the Program, in 5 years, the whole country has mobilized about 851,380 billion VND. Of which, the State budget including other programs and projects is 266,785 billion VND, accounting for 31.34%, credit capital is 434,950 billion VND, accounting for 51%, mobilized from enterprises is 42,198 billion VND, accounting for 4.9%, people's contribution is 107,447 billion VND, accounting for 12.62%.

However, according to Chairman of the Economic Committee Nguyen Van Giau, the implementation still has shortcomings. That is, the State budget and social resources mobilized for the Program are still much lower than the reality. Some localities have shown signs of chasing achievements, so they mobilized too much of the people, and the outstanding debts of basic construction that cannot be paid off have left serious consequences and affected the Party and State's policy of building new rural areas.

“The results of new rural construction are uneven. The number of communes meeting new rural criteria in the Southeast is 46.4%, the Red River Delta is 42.8%, the Northern mountainous region only reaches about 8.2%, the Central Highlands reaches 13.2%, and the Mekong Delta reaches 16.7%,” said Mr. Nguyen Van Giau.

Speaking at the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue said that the policy of implementing the national target program on new rural construction associated with restructuring the agricultural sector is completely correct and it is necessary to go deeper into the issue of restructuring the agricultural sector and expanding the new cooperative model in agriculture.

Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue also asked the monitoring delegation to study the reasons why old-style cooperatives cannot be converted to new-style cooperatives, whether it is because of old outstanding debts that still exist, even though they have been handled several times.

“We propose that the National Assembly issue a resolution allowing the Government to study the cancellation of this outstanding debt. We have not yet compiled specific statistics, but the debt is small, but legally, if it cannot be dissolved, it will be considered weak,” said the Deputy Prime Minister.

Going straight into a number of issues that need to be analyzed to better implement this policy in the coming time, Chairman of the National Assembly's Committee on Science, Technology and Environment Phan Xuan Dung said that recently there has been a fairly large movement of Vietnamese enterprises and investors investing abroad.

“Enterprises and investors reported that the investment process was very effective, investing in many countries such as the US, Australia, Russia, Laos. For example, investing in Russia or the US after 5-6 years, the capital was recovered. Therefore, in this report, we also need to analyze the differences between our policies and yours to calculate the policy impact,” said Mr. Phan Xuan Dung.

Expressing concern about the issue of training rural labor resources, Head of the National Assembly's Petition Committee Nguyen Duc Hien said: "For example, the quality of fishermen's labor, fishermen must be trained from intermediate, college and university levels, especially in fisheries training, otherwise they will not meet the needs of rural development and maritime development."

Concluding the discussion, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Phung Quoc Hien asked the monitoring delegation to absorb the comments of the National Assembly Standing Committee and Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue, especially to prepare a resolution on this issue, clearly stating solutions to overcome existing problems, and continue to complete the report to submit to the National Assembly Standing Committee for comments next September, then submit it to the 14th National Assembly at the 2nd session to conduct supreme monitoring./.

According to VOV