The Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) has submitted to the government a draft report on principles to remove or extend the time frames for inefficient capital construction projects in 2008.
The MPI said there have been 451 projects of this kind, with a total investment of VND2,692 billion. By April 3, the ministry received the list of projects from 15 ministries, 15 localities and 12 economic groups.
It is believed that the state should avoid scattered investment by rejecting ineffective projects and focusing on major projects for overall benefits, but relevant agencies have not been given clear criteria concerning this.
According to the MPI, the supervision and assessment of the state-invested projects have been carried out improperly for many years. The investment supervision reports from ministries, sectors, corporations and similar agencies have always come late. Many of them did not meet requirements, as they lacked insufficient statistics and data or even completely no analysis or concrete evaluations.
Therefore in 2007, only 17 projects were reported as wasteful (accounting for 0.06 percent of the total number of projects) and 34 projects were assessed as having low quality (making up 0.1 percent). These figures appear unreliable to experts.
The opaque nature of supervision and collection of statistics is thought to make it difficult to build criteria for assessing the projects.
Vu Viet Ngoan, Deputy Head of the National Assembly’s Economic Committee, said that the work would be much easier if parameters before and during the investment projects are standardized.
According to Dr. Cao Sy Kiem, Deputy Head of the Central Party’s Economic Department, ministries, sectors and businesses which are implementing projects using the State budget, should point out shortcomings and reduce ineffective projects. In addition, it is necessary to audit each phase of the projects and carefully consider their impact on economic development, he said.
The Government has asked ministries, sectors, localities, corporations and State-owned groups to reduce the number and cancel the implementation of ineffective projects, while focusing investment on key projects that prove high economic efficiency. Therefore, ministries, sectors, localities, corporations and State-owned groups should be more responsible in order to successfully fulfill their tasks.
Minister of Planning and Investment Vo Hong Phuc said that ministries play an important role in managing sectors and reviewing State-funded projects. For example, in the coal sector, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has to cooperate with banks and capital leasing organisations in order to examine the efficiency of each phase of projects. For transport projects, the Ministry of transport takes responsibility to review all projects under its management. The Prime Minister has requested the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Finance to check loans from international bonds worth US$750 million of Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (Vinashin) and inspect the implementation of projects using this source of capital, he added.
In the future, ministries, sectors, localities, corporations and State-owned groups should strictly follow principles on ending or extending the time for inefficient capital construction projects in order to increase the efficiency of national economy.
Source: VOV