The Government said that the amendment of the Law on Public Investment demonstrates decentralization and delegation of power according to the motto "locality decides, locality does, locality takes responsibility"; cutting down and simplifying administrative procedures, not allowing responsibility to be passed on, avoiding creating a "request-grant" mechanism...
Morning of October 29, at At the 8th session of the 15th National Assembly, Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung, authorized by the Prime Minister, presented the Project Summary Report. Law on Public Investment (amended).
The Minister said that the revised content of the Law deeply reflects the spirit of breakthrough, reform, decentralization and delegation of power of the Party Central Committee, the Politburo, the National Assembly and the Government according to the motto "locality decides, locality acts, locality takes responsibility".
The Central Government, the National Assembly and the Government play a role in creating, strengthening and perfecting institutions and in inspecting and supervising.
The amendment of the Law also aims to ensure clarity of people, work, responsibilities and results; to cut down and simplify administrative procedures, to prevent responsibilities from being passed around, and to avoid creating a “request-grant” mechanism...
Strong decentralization and delegation
The draft amended Law consists of 7 Chapters and 109 Articles (amending 44 articles, adding 15 articles; abolishing 7 articles compared to the 2019 Law on Public Investment), with main contents to specify 5 major policy groups.
Specifically, the policy group: institutionalizing pilot and specific mechanisms and policies that have been approved by the National Assembly; continuing to promote decentralization and delegation of power; improving the quality of investment preparation, resource exploitation, and capacity to implement public investment projects of localities and state-owned enterprises; promoting the implementation and disbursement of ODA capital plans and preferential loans from foreign donors (foreign capital); simplifying procedures.
Notably, the draft Law allows the separation of compensation, support, resettlement, and site clearance into independent projects for all project groups (including group B and C projects).
The Prime Minister's authority is stipulated to assign a provincial People's Committee as the competent authority to implement projects in the area of 2 or more provincial-level administrative units. The Chairman of the provincial People's Committee is selected to assign a district-level People's Committee as the competent authority to implement projects in the area of 2 or more district-level administrative units or to organize project implementation according to his/her authority.
The draft Law decentralizes the authority to adjust the medium-term public investment plan of central budget capital among ministries, central and local agencies from the National Assembly Standing Committee to the Prime Minister.
Decentralize the authority to decide on the use of the central budget capital reserve and unallocated central budget capital in the medium-term public investment plan from the National Assembly to the National Assembly Standing Committee.
The draft also proposes to increase the scale of public investment capital: for important national projects from 30 trillion VND or more; for group A, group B and group C projects with a scale twice that of current regulations.
At the same time, decentralize authority to the heads of ministries and central agencies to decide on investment policies for group A projects managed by their agencies and organizations with capital scale of less than VND 10,000 billion; group A projects from VND 10,000 billion to VND 30,000 billion are under the authority of the Prime Minister.
Decentralize authority to People's Committees at all levels to decide on investment policies for group B and group C projects under their management; adjust medium-term public investment plans of local budget capital under their management.
Decentralize the authority to extend the time for allocating central budget capital from the Prime Minister to the investment policy decision-making level; local budget capital from the provincial People's Council to the Chairman of the People's Committee at all levels.
Accordingly, for central budget capital, group A, group B and group C projects with total investment of less than 10,000 billion VND will have their capital allocation period extended for no more than 1 year, and group A projects from 10,000 billion VND to 30,000 billion VND will have their capital allocation period extended for no more than 2 years. In addition to the above period, the Prime Minister shall decide to extend the central budget capital allocation period.
Ensure compensation and resettlement work is associated with investment and project completion.
Examining the draft Law, the National Assembly's Finance and Budget Committee agreed on the necessity of researching and submitting to the National Assembly for consideration the Law on Public Investment (amended) in order to continue to innovate and improve the effectiveness of public investment management, and overcome shortcomings, limitations, and problems arising in the process of implementing the Law.
Regarding the separation of compensation, support, resettlement, and site clearance into independent projects, the majority of opinions agree with the Government's proposal to allow the separation of compensation and resettlement into independent component projects within the overall project for all project groups.
However, it is recommended to strictly regulate the articles and clauses to ensure that compensation and resettlement work is associated with investment to complete the project, to avoid waste, and the total time for arranging capital to implement 2 independent component projects to complete the programs and projects must not exceed the regulations on project implementation time.
Regarding increasing the scale of public investment capital, the majority of opinions of the appraisal agency said that the regulations on classifying public investment projects have been implemented since 2015. Up to now, economic and social conditions and management capacity have changed a lot, so adjusting the criteria for classifying projects (essentially promoting decentralization) is necessary.
However, the adjustment needs to be calculated according to a unified ratio between project types. It is recommended to consider increasing the capital scale of project groups compared to current regulations to match GDP growth, project management capacity of ministries, branches, localities and the national construction price index issued over the years.
Regarding the decentralization of authority to People's Committees at all levels to decide on investment policies for Group B and Group C projects managed by localities, the Finance and Budget Committee believes that decentralization of authority to People's Committees at all levels to decide on investment policies for Group B and Group C projects managed by localities is a major change.
In addition, deciding on investment policies for projects is an important local issue, so the current Law on Public Investment assigns the People's Council to decide on investment policies for projects, and the People's Committee at the same level to decide on investment projects, which is a measure to control power and limit abuse of power.
Therefore, the majority of opinions suggest that for group A projects, the provincial People's Council decides on the investment policy, and decentralizes the People's Committees at all levels to decide on investment in group B and C projects. For district level, it is necessary to supplement the assignment of the district People's Council to decide on the investment policy for group B projects, and decentralizes the district People's Committee to decide on the investment policy for group C projects.
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