Slow capital disbursement, Deputy Prime Minister requests 'review of where policies are wrong'

At the conference to deploy the project "Investing in the construction of at least 1 million social housing apartments for low-income people and industrial park workers in the period of 2021-2030" in 2024, taking place today (February 22), Deputy Minister of Construction Nguyen Van Sinh informed that only 6 social housing projects in localities have been disbursed with a capital of about 531 billion VND, or more than 0.4% of the 120,000 billion VND credit package.

Faced with the slow disbursement of the 120,000 billion VND credit package, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha frankly said: " With the credit package for social housing, we must recognize why the disbursement is slow ."

The Deputy Prime Minister also requested that commercial banks need to be extremely "revolutionary" in this regard.

" With the 120,000 billion VND package, the bank needs to review and re-evaluate, it cannot be arbitrary. It is necessary to review the wrong policies somewhere, should not propose policies that are not in line with the market, " said the Deputy Prime Minister.

According to the Deputy Prime Minister, businesses say it is difficult to access loans. Therefore, commercial banks also have to calculate profits, so the preferential policy of reducing interest rates by 1.5 - 2% may not be in line with the laws of the market economy, while loans in other sectors are 1.5 - 2% higher.

Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha. (Photo: Ministry of Construction).

“ The State Bank needs to recalculate, it cannot act arbitrarily, there is a lot of money left idle but it cannot be lent. It needs to review where the policy is unreasonable, it can consider the state subsidizing commercial banks so that they can implement the policy of lowering lending interest rates ,” the Deputy Prime Minister suggested.

Reporting on the slow disbursement, Deputy Minister Sinh cited two reasons. The first is that there are few projects being implemented, and the second is the conditions for accessing credit.

According to reports from banks, there are some businesses with bad debts. Bad debts have affected disbursement. Therefore, the Deputy Prime Minister has asked banks to consider removing the obstacles for each project.

The Deputy Prime Minister affirmed that to implement the project, developing social housing requires stable financial resources in which the state plays a leading role with the participation of businesses and society.

What does the business propose?

Mr. Pham Thieu Hoa - Chairman of Vinhomes said that the implementation of social housing still has many difficulties and obstacles. Specifically, enterprises are exempted from land use fees but still have to determine land rent. In addition, confirming the buyer is also time-consuming. Mr. Hoa proposed to shorten administrative procedures.

Mr. Hoa also said that currently, the investment rate for social housing is 25% lower than that for commercial housing. Currently, social housing also needs quality and exemplary investment, so the Ministry of Construction should review this investment rate.

“ Social housing needs its own mechanism, faster and better quality. The perspective and thinking of social housing subjects needs to be broader and more equal, ” said Mr. Hoa.

Mr. Tran Ngoc Anh, Deputy General Director of Viglacera, shared that in reality, this enterprise has invested in and completed 8,000 apartments. Of these, only 5,000 apartments have been put into use, while 3,000 apartments are still in stock.

“ Of the 3,000 unsold units, most are worker housing projects around industrial parks. These projects have basically synchronous investment with infrastructure, technology, utilities... not inferior to commercial housing with prices ranging from 250-600 million VND/unit, apartment rental prices from 1.2-2.4 million/month. Although the price is reasonable, there are currently some regulations that only workers in industrial parks can buy ,” said Mr. Ngoc Anh.

From there, businesses recommend that there should be a mechanism for workers' housing, allowing 10 subjects such as social housing to be purchased to encourage businesses, avoiding the construction of workers' housing but no one living there.

Sharing the same view, Mr. Vuong Quoc Toan, Chairman of the Board of Directors of An Hung Group, also pointed out the fact that the current legal procedures for building social housing are "too long". There are enterprises specializing in building social housing projects that have had to "travel" to dozens of provinces, but have only been approved by 11 provinces, because the legal procedures related to land are too complicated and take too long.

In particular, accessing loans is "very difficult" so the preferential credit package of 120,000 billion VND cannot be implemented.

Chau Anh

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