Joint efforts needed to speed up public investment

Duong Ba Duc, Director of the Ministry of Finance’s Department of Investment

A large amount of public investment capital has been allocated for 2023. Although the capital’s disbursement has increased over the past one to two months, it is expected not to meet expectations. Could you tell us about this?

More than VND700 trillion of public investment capital has been allocated for 2023. If the increases in public investment capital earmarked for localities are taken into account, the total allocated capital amounts to almost VND800 trillion. According to the Ministry of Finance’s statistics, 59 percent of the VND800 trillion, or 65 percent of the VND700 trillion, was disbursed in the first 11 months of 2023, a relatively good result compared to the same period in 2022 thanks to great efforts by the Government, ministries, sectors and localities.

Although the progress of 2023 public investment disbursement is better than 2022’s, it’s very hard to reach the 2023 target, as there is only one month left to fulfill the remaining 41, or 35 percent. The Ministry of Transport and the State Bank of Vietnam have been doing a good job in the disbursement, while 15 other ministries, sectors and localities have reached less than 15 percent of the target, and two localities fulfilled less than 35 percent.

What is the reason for that tardy capital disbursement?

Mechanisms and policies, disbursers’ performance and objective problems are attributed to the tardy disbursement of public investment capital.

Contrary, inadequate and unclear policies, including problematic regulations in the Law on Public Investment, for example, make capital disbursers confused and hesitate to implement capital disbursement.

Another problem is that disbursers fear to make mistakes and, therefore, hesitate to do disbursement. The Prime Minister recently issued a decree to encourage and protect those who dare to think and do to promote public investment.

Ministries, sectors and localities need to seriously follow the Prime Minister’s directions in order to fulfill the goal of public investment capital disbursement.

In the long term, it is necessary to comprehensively review and make clear regulations and policies. The Government and the National Assembly are determined to improve laws and policies and make them meet the actual development demands.

More than VND700 trillion of public investment capital has been allocated for 2023

What are solutions to reach the Government’s 2023 public investment disbursement target?

It’s hard to say about this, as there is only one month for the 2023 target’s fulfillment, and there will be not enough time to better policies, so something that can be done in this last month only is disbursement improvement. I think that ministries, sectors and localities need to ease project site problems through speeding up site clearance compensation, and construction units must work overtime to accomplish projects as soon as possible. All must try their best to reach 95 percent of the target set by Directive 08 of the Prime Minister.

There is only one month left to achieve the goal, and all must acknowledge that this is a big task, and the entire political system, including local governments and contractors, among others, need to make joint efforts to reach the target set by the Government. I believe that, with joint efforts by ministries, sectors and localities, the 2023 public investment disbursement target will be fulfilled to create a good precondition for fulfilling the 2024 tasks.