PM urges speeding up disbursement of public investment

Hanoi – Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on October 8 signed an official dispatch, urging relevant authorities to accelerate the disbursement of public investment in the remaining months of this year.

The Government leader ordered ministries, sectors, and localities to fully grasp the significance of public investment to socio-economic development and see it a top political mission, contributing to bolstering economic growth, creating new development space, reducing logistics costs, and generating jobs.

They were requested to complete mechanisms and policies as well as keep close tabs on and remove roadblocks in the disbursement in a timely fashion.

PM Chinh particularly ordered the reduction of the execution time to handle administrative procedures related to the capital disbursement by 30 per cent and acceleration of payment and final settlement of the public capital, avoiding a backlog of payments in the end of the year.

Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the nation’s economic locomotives, must promote their intrinsic strength, carry out drastic and effective measure to get a move on their entrusted disbursement work, enhance their traditional growth motives, capitalise on new ones while harmoniously implementing the Capital Law and the National Assembly’s resolution on piloting special mechanisms and policies for the development of Ho Chi Minh City, he highlighted in the dispatch.

The Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) was asked to join hands with the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and relevant ministries and organisations to keep a close watch on the progress of public capital disbursement and make monthly report to the Government and the Prime Minister so that flexible, timely, and effective measures will be issued to complete the disbursement target in 2024. Besides, it must work to adjust public investment plans in 2024 of ministries, organisations, and localities to assure quality and progress as required while removing bottlenecks for competent sides in carrying out the Bidding Law and Public – Private Partnership Investment Law and the Planning Law.

Meanwhile, the MoF was requested to direct the State Treasury to ensure payment sources for projects. Timely payments should be made for completed workload with sufficient required dossiers.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment was urged to remove bottlenecks in procedures related to the licensing process for mines and the extraction of materials for public investment projects as well as resolve difficulties regarding the new provisions of the Land Law and relevant decrees.

The Ministry of Construction must closely monitor the developments of the building material market and instruct localities to regularly update and adjust price indices to assure that they align with the market price fluctuations.

The Government targets 95 per cent public investment disbursement this year. Some 320.56 trillion VND (12.9 billion USD) had been disbursed as of the end of September, or 47.29 per cent of the plan set by the Prime Minister and lower than the same time last year, lagging behind expectation.

Hanoi disbursed some 2.2 trillion VND (96.44 million USD) worth of investment sourced from the State budget in February, equivalent to 66.5 percent of last month’s figure, but an increase of 6.2 percent year-on-year, the municipal Statistics Office reported.

The prime minister is again urging for quicker disbursement of public investment, with some localities seemingly at a standstill in implementing this task.