Slew of improvements in proposed railway rules

Nguyen Danh Huy, deputy Minister of Construction

The draft is based on five guiding principles: institutionalising the Party’s policies on improving regulations and developing railway policies; ensuring constitutionality, legality, and consistency within the system while aligning with international treaties; retaining relevant provisions from the 2017 Railway Law while amending unsuitable content and encouraging decentralisation in operations; maximising resources for railway infrastructure, with the state budget playing a leading role while encouraging private sector participation; and advancing application of modern tech.

Accordingly, to meet the requirements of simplification and reduction of administrative procedures and business conditions, the draft removes the regulations on 20 per cent of administrative procedures and one-third of business conditions.

The draft proposes strong decentralisation to local authorities in investment and management of railway infrastructure operations. Specifically, the plan involves decentralising to local authorities to oversee 10 administrative procedures, including approving policies for building crossings, issuing and extending permits for crossing construction on local and specialised railways, registering carriages, and granting driving licences.

It also proposes to assign the Minister of Construction to specify the age limit for using railway vehicles instead of the government.

Regarding investment in railway infrastructure development, the draft introduces additional regulations to maximise the mobilisation of local resources and private sector participation. It includes provisions to encourage organisations and individuals to invest through various contract models such as build-transfer, build-operate-transfer, leasing, and more.

It also supplements the regulations which allow localities to use their budgets for compensation, resettlement support, and investment in construction of some items of national railway infrastructure.

Some regulations are amended to clearly define the responsibilities of entities in investing in the construction of national, local, and specialised railways and connecting technical infrastructure works shared with roads. The addition of these regulations creates a legal basis for investment in railway infrastructure, for example, investment in the construction of bridges shared between rail and road.

To simplify investment procedures, the draft law adds provisions on applying the overall technical design instead of the basic design in the feasibility study report, and provincial people’s committees are allowed to immediately decide to prepare and appraise investment in urban railway projects without having to carry out procedures on investment policies.

This provision is one of the solutions to remove bottlenecks in investment procedures for the local urban railway system, contributing to accelerating the process and completing the urban network in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City by 2035.

Reviewing relevant legal provisions – including the Law on Capital City, the Land Law, and resolutions on specific policies for key national and urban railway projects – the draft introduces additional regulations on using land funds near railway stations and for transit-oriented development.

The draft also amends and adds some rules on leasing and transferring, for a limited time, the right to exploit railway infrastructure assets invested by the state. This is in order to diversify types of enterprises participating, privately and publicly.

If the amendments are adopted at the upcoming session of the National Assembly in November, new development space will widely open for the business community and the industry as a whole.

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