New report tackles land corruption issue head on

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Commissioned by the Embassy of Denmark, Sweden and the World Bank, the report, “Recognising and reducing corruption risks in land management in Vietnam”, evaluated the leading causes of corruption in this country.

According to Dao Trung Chinh, deputy director of the land department at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE), the Vietnamese government had been dealing actively with the above issues.

Chinh said administrative reform has been actively implemented in Vietnam and the Administrative Procedural Law would come into force on July 1, 2011. However, he admitted that although many documents needed to be made public, transparency rules were still not well implemented.

The “Survey report on Information Disclosure of Land Management Regulations”, a parallel study commissioned by the World Bank and carried out by Centre for Development Studies and Community Support (CECODES) pointed out that although nearly all websites had instructions for obtaining a “red book” - or land and house right certificate, other key documents were much harder to find, either online or in any other forms.

Meanwhile the drive toward accountability was not highly valued by local authorities and officials, who did not implement necessary measures.

According to Dang Ngoc Dinh, CECODES director,  land corruption land in Vietnam was mostly about two key issues: obtaining a land-use rights certificate by individuals and organisations and the process associated with land acquisition and allocation. Dinh said the quantity was reported highest in the first issue but the seriousness was reported in the second issue.

“The report has found that local authorities have the “absolute right” to decide which individuals or organisations could be granted land. And this is the key for corruption,’ Dinh said.

According to Dang Hung Vo, former MoNRE Deputy Minister, a contributor to the report, the legal framework needs to be changed to limit this absolute right, as well as to increase the control and supervision of the local authorities’ decisions.

Vo said that although the current legal framework mentioned this, it didn’t go far enough. “The legal documentation must clarify when the local authorities can grant land and when the land must be taken into auction,” Vo stressed.

The report, the result of a survey done in Lang Son, Bac Ninh, Binh Dinh, Ho Chi Minh City and Tien Giang, shows that corruption mainly occurs in exclusive agencies, bodies with low accountability and decision makers. It pointed out that land management and use corruption in Vietnam was worsening, as 85 per cent of the surveyed households said there was corruption in this sector and 30 per cent of the targeted businesses said they had to give bribes to get land-use certificates.

“Corruption related to land is an important challenge for Vietnam. We hope this report will help point the way toward reforms that will make corruption less likely,” said John Nielsen, ambassador of Denmark to Vietnam.

Victoria Kwakwa, country director of the World Bank in Vietnam added that it was natural to wonder about the level of corruption but it was much more important to understand the reasons for the corruption and what could be done to reduce the risk. Several current policies make corruption related to land unusually profitable. The practice of compulsory land acquisitions, especially when prices are set below market value, creates large uncontested profits for some and this can contribute to corruption.

“Sometimes such acquisitions are needed, for example when building a road or a public project, but direct negotiations are better for private projects,” said Vo.

“When compulsory land acquisition is needed, an independent mechanism for determining prices is also needed to bring them more in line with market prices. This would help reduce the large number of complaints about compensation,” Vo added.