Mr. Nguyen Quoc Hiep - Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Construction Contractors (VACC) spoke at the meeting. (Photo: TRAN HAI)
At the meeting, representatives of associations and enterprises proposed to the Government, the Prime Minister, ministries and branches many solutions to remove all difficulties and obstacles, creating favorable conditions for domestic construction corporations and enterprises to develop strongly, meeting the requirements of national development in the new period, especially being capable of undertaking key national projects.
Mr. Nguyen Quoc Hiep - Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Construction Contractors (VACC) stated that contractors are facing difficulties, including the special mechanism of assigning contractors to manage the exploitation of construction material mines. Some contractors are still stuck with procedures for granting licenses to open mines, planning, and determining actual reserves. For example, a mine is twice the demand of a construction enterprise, but the mine owner requires the enterprise to buy all of it, so the enterprise does not know what to do with the excess output. Therefore, it is necessary to assign localities to have a specific mechanism for compensation and site clearance of mines. He suggested that it is necessary to replace the detailed unit prices that we have to "chase after to manage" all day with a general standard price, and to develop specialized standards. Regarding the application mechanism, there needs to be flexibility, close to reality, to avoid disadvantages for contractors...
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Deo Ca Group Ho Minh Hoang said that the Group has been and is the investor and general contractor for 12/29 key national projects, including public investment projects and PPP investment projects. During the implementation process, there are some problems that need to be resolved regarding mechanisms, policies, and legal regulations, specifically as follows: Dong Dang-Tra Linh Expressway Project, investors and contractors have advanced nearly 350 billion to organize construction, support localities in site clearance, State budget capital has disbursed 300 billion VND, credit capital has been arranged but cannot be disbursed because the project has not been approved to adjust the investment policy when increasing the State budget capital to 70% (although the National Assembly has agreed since November 2023). Cao Bang Province has explained the Appraisal Report of the Inter-sectoral Appraisal Council, reported to the Prime Minister many documents, and given instructions back and forth, but so far, the time for approving the investment policy has not been determined. For this project, the Group recommends giving instructions to the parties on how to approve the adjustment of the investment policy.
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Deo Ca Group Ho Minh Hoang spoke at the meeting (Photo: TRAN HAI).
At the Quang Ngai-Hoai Nhon Expressway Project: with the improved method in tunnel construction of the Deo Ca system, the contractor has the basis to complete the project in December 2025 according to the direction of the Prime Minister. Instead of being 8 months ahead of schedule, it can be 12 months ahead of schedule if Quang Ngai province is determined in site clearance, material quarry allocation, and forest land procedures. The Group recommends that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment review the agricultural law, land law, and related guiding Decrees and Circulars to allow the mechanism for special tunnel works, temporary works, and service roads approaching the tunnel to be implemented without changing the purpose of forest use.
For the Ha Giang-Tuyen Quang Expressway project: the division of the bidding packages is not appropriate, 22 bridges on the 77km length of the project are divided into 1 package, the bridge construction contractor does not have access roads or service roads because it depends on the road construction package, causing costs to increase and affecting the project progress; the division of this bidding package is contrary to the direction of the Prime Minister, while the bridge construction progress depends on the road progress... Therefore, to meet the required progress, it is necessary to adjust the construction methods, add access service roads or extend the implementation time.
For the Tan Phu-Bao Loc Expressway project, the proportion of State budget capital participation is low, about 36%, the loan capital is very large (about 9,877 billion), the project is not allowed to apply the revenue sharing reduction mechanism (stuck in Decree 35/2021/ND-CP), leading to the project not having its Feasibility Study Report approved. If the State credit loan scheme is applied to compensate, it will be stuck in Decree 78/2023/ND-CP (requiring different equity capital than the PPP Law). Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha has directed to resolve the issue, but the amendment of the Decree will take from 6 months to 1 year.
Deo Ca also recommends: the system of norms has been amended and supplemented in Circular 09 of the Ministry of Construction; timely issued instructions on determining material prices at the mine according to a specific mechanism (especially this is the first time it has been applied and there is no precedent before). However, there are still some norms on tunnels (roads, railways, ...) that need to be reviewed, updated, supplemented, and adjusted to ensure correctness, sufficiency, and suitability with current construction methods. In the role of an investor, Deo Ca recognizes that price determination during the process of establishment, appraisal, and approval must be consistent with market prices and project technical standards. However, in the current post-audit process, there is still a "viewpoint" requiring recalculation and taking the lowest price (for example: the price of branded, stable, and quality cement is high; some local cement is low priced, ...).
In order for Vietnamese enterprises to soon become self-sufficient in investing, producing, and constructing projects requiring high technology and engineering (railways, metros, smart transportation, smart cities, etc.), the State needs to have support policies: organizing for Vietnamese enterprises to visit, study, and research the models of foreign enterprises and training schools (colleges, universities) that have experience in implementing similar projects. Thereby, to organize training for enterprises themselves, in order to prepare for joint participation in construction, reception, transfer, and mastering of technology.
The Group also hopes that the Ministry of Transport will need to enhance its responsibility in proactively developing and promulgating specialized standards and norms, and BIM models to apply to transport projects, especially high-speed railway projects. For large-scale projects, state management agencies need to consider giving priority to enterprises with management capacity, with specific products, to organize leadership, connection, and training for other enterprises, and give priority to local enterprises with projects (currently, bidding is limited because the bid evaluation does not reflect the actual capacity of the contractor; the bidding documents are not highly quantitative, ...).
The Group stated that the Politburo has just concluded its opinion on the policy of implementing the North-South high-speed railway project. This is a very large-scale project and requires many units with full capacity and experience. In the past, many units have been constructing large (unprecedented) packages of the North-South Eastern Expressway Project in the 2021-2025 period, under the direction of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Transport, determined to complete it by the end of 2025.
Thus, after 2025, human resources, machinery and equipment of enterprises will be in stock and need to be used to optimize production, while taking advantage of the country's internal resources. Therefore, the implementation of the high-speed railway project needs a State mechanism to create conditions for these enterprises to access and implement, contributing to the development of the country.
Accordingly, the project implementation needs to be divided into 2 components. Component 1: construction items from the rail section down with similar characteristics to road works (including bridges, roads, tunnels) need to be assigned to domestic enterprises to implement similar to recent expressway projects. Component 2: locomotives, signal information systems, etc. are assigned to domestic enterprises in joint ventures with foreign enterprises.
Mr. Nguyen Van Truong, Director of Xuan Truong Construction Enterprise, spoke at the meeting. (Photo: TRAN HAI)
Businessman Nguyen Van Truong, Director of Xuan Truong Construction Enterprise, suggested that there should be a mechanism for enterprises to be proactive in material sources, for example, combining digging lakes, ponds, and dredging to take advantage of this source as filling materials for traffic projects in that area, not wasting resources. He suggested that ministries and branches need to be flexible in this area, and should authorize localities to provide filling material mines.
Mr. Truong pointed out that in reality, only the locality knows which mines can be exploited to make landfill materials. From experience with implemented projects, Mr. Truong said that the procedures for projects involving state capital are very difficult, but for private enterprises to do it themselves, it is simpler.
It is important that localities must innovate their thinking, management and exploitation of material mines, but must go hand in hand with environmental protection. In the era of strong development of science and technology like today, it is necessary to apply modern technology and equipment to exploit material mines, not necessarily following the traditional way of blasting, drilling and breaking rocks... affecting the surrounding environment.
There needs to be close coordination between ministries and sectors, for example, policy coordination in dredging rivers and canals to get materials for road construction. Therefore, he suggested that the Prime Minister thoroughly decentralize and delegate authority to provincial leaders in charge of this work.
He also recommended that the underpass systems in phase 2 of the current North-South expressway need to be immediately handled, otherwise when expanded in the future, handling the underpasses will be very costly and complicated.
Another difficult problem that businesses are facing today is the situation of capital arrears, such as Xuan Truong Construction Company, which has been in arrears for 5 years, about 1,000 billion VND when doing a project in Thai Nguyen. Therefore, the Government and ministries need to actively solve this problem, and have an open mechanism to encourage businesses to invest in projects.
Representative of Vietnam Machinery Installation Corporation - JSC (Lilama) speaking at the meeting. (Photo: TRAN HAI)
The representative of the leadership of Vietnam Machinery Installation Corporation - JSC (Lilama) suggested that currently, Lilama in particular and construction enterprises in general are facing extreme difficulties in recruiting skilled workers; there is a risk of shortage of highly skilled workers in the highly skilled industrial sector such as welders, machine alignment workers, etc. Moreover, recently, skilled workers have chosen to go abroad to work with higher and more stable salaries.
Currently, Lilama is facing many difficulties in mobilizing skilled workers in key projects, even though it sometimes has to pay up to 800,000-1 million VND/person/day without being able to hire skilled workers. Therefore, the Government, ministries and sectors need to have mechanisms and policies that focus on vocational training for highly skilled workers.
Lilama also recommended that the Government, ministries and branches need to support improving the capacity of domestic enterprises to participate in key projects; have regulations for Vietnamese enterprises to participate in the role of EPC contractor consortium...
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Fecon Joint Stock Company Pham Viet Khoa suggested that the Government, ministries and branches need to have a special mechanism because when bidding, they are often required to have experience in similar projects, but for the following new projects such as the Urban Railway Project, the North-South High-Speed Railway with high-tech and complex requirements, the Government needs to have a bidding mechanism to encourage Vietnamese enterprises to participate in these large projects in an official role, not as subcontractors for foreign enterprises, so that domestic enterprises have conditions to invest in technology development and sustainable development.
For domestic enterprises that have never done these projects, they can hire foreign experts. This form should be applied to key projects that require high technology, difficulty and complexity.
Regarding project management by unit price, he said that the world today has applied a lump sum price, or at best, managed by the "turnkey" method, while at present, we still manage too much in detail. He also mentioned that construction debt is still a current problem, causing "delay" in payment for contractors.
Faced with the current difficulties in labor recruitment, the Company recommends that the Government should have preferential mechanisms to help businesses build and recruit labor...
Source: https://baotuyenquang.com.vn/thao-go-moi-kho-khan-vuong-mac-tao-dieu-kien-thuan-loi-cho-cac-doanh-nghiep-xay-dung-vuon-len-phat-trien-199640.html
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