Centres to get teeth into property dilemma

Vina Code Law Firm (VNC) head Hoang Van Son said establishing specialised centres for property project and planning transactions was necessary to introduce the public investment projects together with their detailed planning schemes.

The centres would make it easier for firms wanting to lease or to rent land to seek partners, said Son.

“Land lease or land allocation at projects with completed site clearance should be all brought to public auctions to ensure transparency,” the lawyer proposed.

Government Inspectorate deputy chief Nguyen Duc Hanh agreed establishing project and planning transaction centres would be a step in the right direction.

“It is easy to say, but hard to realise as it pertains to planning and other complex issues,” said Hanh.

He also wanted to put property projects out for auction to find capable developers.

Reality shows that land procedures were fraught with a myriad of problems.

A Ministry of Construction survey shows that a construction project must undergo 33 different procedures with average time for preparations of three years. That was why the Vietnamese property market has a low ranking in terms of transparency index compared to other countries.

Lawyer Nguyen Thien Hoang, from Dazpro law firm, said land leasing or allocation towards property firms was regulated by a number of laws such as the Civil Code, the Land Law, the Law on Property Business, Housing Law and the Law on Urban Planning.

Each law has a specific system of guiding documents which may be overlapping or inconsistent with others, leading to confusion in law enforcement from the part of investors and state management bodies.

Hoang said under the 2009 Law on Urban Planning’s Clause 70, urban planning management organisations are held responsible for presenting investment locations to investors in demand.

Meanwhile, 2003 Land Law’s Clause 122 said this was the responsibility of the body receiving land allocation or land lease records.

Decree 69/2009/ND-CP dated August 13, 2009, Clause 29 regulated the responsibility to present investment locations to investors was held by the body receiving investment records.

“Confusing regulations lead to localities acting in divergent ways,” Hoang said.