Two years, nearly 200 public investment projects delayed settlement

The supervision session took place after the HCMC People's Council directly supervised 18 units and surveyed 20 projects. Photo: HOANG HUNG

On the afternoon of June 15, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council supervised the implementation of public investment work in the 2021-2025 period for the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee. Comrade Nguyen Thi Le, Deputy Secretary of the City Party Committee, Chairwoman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council, led the monitoring delegation.

Nearly 200 projects violated settlement time

Vice Chairman of the HCMC People's Council Nguyen Van Dung said that, implementing the HCMC People's Council's supervision program, in the past three months, the HCMC People's Council has supervised 18 units, district departments, project management boards, governing bodies, project investors and conducted field surveys of 20 public investment projects. Thereby, a number of difficulties, limitations and recommendations were noted.

Through a survey of 20 public investment projects, Head of the Economic - Budget Committee of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council Le Truong Hai Hieu said that one of the difficulties is the settlement of accounts. Many projects completed in the previous medium-term period are still being settled, such as the irrigation project on the right bank of the Saigon River (South of Tra canal) and the irrigation project on the right bank of the Saigon River in Cu Chi district from Provincial Road 8 to Tra canal (North of Tra canal).

Meanwhile, Deputy Nguyen Van Dat, Deputy of the Legal Committee of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council, after expressing concern about 111 projects at risk of not being completed in the 2021-2025 period, also raised concerns about the settlement of completed projects.

Delegate Nguyen Van Dat cited the report of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee on the very low settlement rate. In 2021, there were 2,208 projects with a value of VND 121,000 billion, but only 923 projects were settled, reaching 41.8%; in 2022, it only reached 59.63%.

Delegate Nguyen Van Dat asked a question at the supervision session. Photo: HOANG HUNG

The delegate analyzed that through the report, there were about 200 projects violating the settlement time. This raises the responsibility of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee in the direction of departments and investors. Because, slow settlement leads to outstanding debts in basic construction, slow disbursement of public investment, and slow exploitation of assets formed after investment.

“While this work is very important, why is it slow? How will the units that violate this settlement be handled?”, asked Deputy Nguyen Van Dat.

Reporting on behalf of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee, Deputy Director of the Department of Planning and Investment Pham Trung Kien explained that some projects have been completed and put into use but there are still problems with compensation for site clearance (people have not agreed with the compensation price), so the investor has not been able to prepare the project settlement documents.

In addition, during the year, many completed projects arose, and at the same time, there was a situation where in the same period of time, many completed projects were submitted for final settlement audit and sent to the audit agency, but due to the limited number of civil servants specializing in final settlement audit, the final settlement audit was delayed.

Besides, due to subjective reasons, some investors have not focused on the final settlement of completed projects, so the number of files with delayed completion settlement is still high.

Deputy Director of the Department of Planning and Investment Pham Trung Kien reports to the monitoring delegation. Photo: HOANG HUNG

Poor coordination, slow site clearance

Previously, reporting to the monitoring delegation, Deputy Director of the Department of Planning and Investment Pham Trung Kien said that in the 2021-2025 period, the central budget capital allocated to Ho Chi Minh City is more than 33,000 billion VND, of which more than 32,100 billion VND has been allocated. The city's budget capital is more than 142,500 billion VND, of which nearly 140,000 billion VND has been allocated in detail.

Over the past two years, disbursement has not met expectations, mainly due to the impact of the pandemic in 2021 and the impacts of international conflicts and general economic difficulties globally and nationally. In particular, difficulties in compensation and site clearance are also a major cause.

Through supervision and practical work, Deputy Tran Van Bay, Deputy Director of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment, said that there are two emerging issues in the site clearance work. That is the valuation consultancy unit, currently the number of enterprises with valuation consultancy functions is very strong, but in reality, those with sufficient capacity, conditions and actual valuation activities can be counted on the fingers, easy to do and difficult to refuse. There is a project that has been hired 20 times but no unit has participated, very deadlocked.

Delegate Tran Van Bay, Deputy Director of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment of Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: HOANG HUNG

According to him, the department needs to advise the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee to study and propose a mechanism to establish state price appraisal consulting units.

“Currently, in the notary field, the private and public sectors compete fairly with each other. In the enforcement of judgments, there are private bailiffs. As for valuation consultancy, this field should also have the participation of the public sector,” said Deputy Tran Van Bay.

The second problem, according to Deputy Tran Van Bay, is the organizational structure and staffing of the Compensation and Site Clearance Boards of districts. Many localities established this Board with a large force, but then, when the number of projects decreased, the human resources also dispersed. Many places also do not have money to pay salaries to the Board members, because they are autonomous units, receiving 2% of the compensation fund, so if there are no projects, there is no money to pay salaries. While this is a difficult task, it requires practical experience to be able to do it.

The delegate said that this improvement will be very necessary when Ho Chi Minh City carries out major projects such as renovating Xuyen Tam canal, building expressways, etc.

Disbursement situation of medium-term public investment capital 2021-2025:

(unit: billion VND)

	2021		2022		2023 (as of May 31)
Total capital	19,721	61.1%	26,635	71.3%	9,230	13.5%
Central capital	9,230	34.8%	1,548	62.44%	6,487	43.3%
Local capital	18,680	63.82%	25,086	71.9%	2,742	5.1%

Also related to the site clearance compensation, Deputy Huynh Thanh Hung, Deputy of the Economic - Budget Committee of the HCMC People's Council, mentioned the delay in relocating technical infrastructure for project construction. Including the project to build the Nguyen Van Linh - Nguyen Huu Tho intersection, which had to wait for approval to relocate infrastructure for 15 months, leading to construction delays. From there, the Deputy raised the issue of coordination between agencies.

Sharing the same view on coordination between agencies, Deputy Do Thi Minh Quan, Chief of Office of the HCMC People's Council, said that through working sessions, departments and branches suggested that it is necessary to determine the responsibility of districts and towns that pay little attention to site clearance. However, in reality, when supervising, districts and towns said that during the implementation of this work, many documents were sent to departments and branches requesting support. That means the coordination between departments and districts in site clearance needs to be tightened.

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/hai-nam-gan-200-du-an-dau-tu-cong-cham-quyet-toan-post693807.html