Vietnam seeking to make law on public investment

Nguyen Van Giau, chief of the Economic and Budget Committee of the National Assembly, co-chaired the event with Minister of Planning and Investment Bui Quang Vinh, since the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) drafted the bill.

Both senior officials stressed the importance of the forthcoming law as Vietnam does not have this law in place, and all public investment activities are being governed by other laws.

Vinh said international observers have been waiting for such a law in Vietnam for 10 years as the country has been determined to leverage the effectiveness of public investment as a national vital resource, which also includes official development assistance sources from overseas.

“We have to leverage the resource since part of it is tax paid by Vietnamese people. Every dong from the tax revenue has to be used transparently at the highest effectiveness.”

He highlighted the significance of agreeing a public-invested project

in principle as all of it is at chapter two of the bill, which is the first actual chapter, as chapter one is for legal definitions. An example by him was the National Assembly had not given the green light to the government’s proposal on building the national bullet train system which would require enormous costs.

Giau, chief of the Economic and Budget Committee of the National Assembly, said the makers of the law were working at full speed as a final bill would be submitted to NA delegations of cities and provinces, and because Vietnam has vowed with international observers 10 years to introduce such the law.

Both Giau and Vinh said making a good law was difficult but implementing the law effectively, which means leveraging public investment resources, is more difficult. However, Giau said countering suspicions from Vietnamese people and international observers about Vietnam’s waste and poor performance in public investment is then more challenging and it would take years to solve the problem of trust.

The workshop received ideas from people’s councils from southern cities and provinces including Ho Chi Minh City.

Huynh Thanh Lap, chief of the city’s People’s Council delegation, said the southern economic hub had its own issues that are different from other localities, therefore, the law needed to effectively solve the decentralisation problem in terms of the central government and local governments.

Minister Vinh said provincial proposals were very important as provincial leaders and officials are closer to reality than lawmakers, thus their ideas and proposals were fundamental.