Minister Nguyen Chi Dung speaks about the 'turning the tide' project.

TPO - In an interview with Tien Phong newspaper regarding public investment, Mr. Nguyen Chi Dung - Minister of Planning and Investment - said that in 2025, focus must be placed on improving the quality of investment preparation for large projects such as the North-South high-speed railway, urban railways in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and strictly dealing with bid rigging and subcontracting...

TPO - In an interview with Tien Phong newspaper regarding public investment, Mr. Nguyen Chi Dung - Minister of Planning and Investment - said that in 2025, focus must be placed on improving the quality of investment preparation for large projects such as the North-South high-speed railway, urban railways in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and strictly dealing with bid rigging and subcontracting...

- Minister, how has public investment positively impacted the economy amidst the challenging context of the 2021-2025 period?

Public investment has effectively played its role as a driving force for economic growth, making a positive contribution to socio-economic development, specifically: Public investment resources have been allocated strategically to implement major tasks, creating breakthroughs in infrastructure. The public investment plan for the 2021-2025 period has allocated 30% of the total central government budget to implement nationally important projects, key projects, and regional expressways.

To date, the whole country has completed over 2,000km of expressways, striving to reach approximately 3,000km by the end of 2025; the North-South Expressway (Eastern section) has been basically completed, and the Cat Linh - Ha Dong, Nhon - Hanoi Station, and Ben Thanh - Suoi Tien urban railway lines have been put into operation; the access channel to Cai Mep - Thi Vai port has been completed… The process of managing public investment plans recently has overcome the situation of scattered and dispersed investment, eliminating the "request-and-grant" mechanism.

- The government has set a public investment plan of 790,727 billion VND for this year . Could you explain the basis for disbursing such a large amount of capital and why public investment continues to be a driving force for breakthroughs in economic growth?

In recent years, the Government has issued many directives and implemented decisive solutions to remove difficulties and obstacles related to the implementation and disbursement of public investment capital, which have been largely resolved. This year, in order for investment capital to be disbursed and for public investment to continue to play its role as a driving force for breakthroughs in economic growth, it is necessary to focus on the following key directions and solutions:

Firstly , decisively implement solutions to accelerate the disbursement of public investment capital right from the beginning of the year: The National Assembly approved a public investment plan with a capital of 790,727 billion VND, which is about 100,000 billion VND higher than in 2024. Therefore, it is necessary to quickly inject capital into the economy through a number of solutions such as assigning leaders to be responsible for monitoring the progress and disbursement of each project according to the set plan, urging and promptly resolving difficulties for each project; promoting decentralization, delegation of power, individualization of responsibility coupled with coordination, supervision, and inspection...

Secondly, this year is a pivotal year in preparing for the medium-term public investment plan for the 2026-2030 period. Therefore, this year must focus on improving the quality of investment preparation for projects, especially strategic projects that can change the country's situation and transform its status, such as: the North-South high-speed railway project, international railway projects, urban railways in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, international transshipment seaports (Nam Do Son - Hai Phong, Lien Chieu - Da Nang, Can Gio - Ho Chi Minh City)... Ministries and sectors need to proactively improve the quality of investment preparation for projects, creating a foundation for rapid project implementation...

Thirdly, with key infrastructure projects such as the North-South Expressway (Eastern section) and Long Thanh International Airport nearing completion, ministries and agencies should ensure that the needs of these projects are fully and promptly met.

In 2025, priority will be given to international railway connectivity projects and urban railways in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Nhu Y.

The 2023 Bidding Law stipulates several solutions to address corruption, negative practices, and waste in bidding, and to improve bidding efficiency, including: amending and supplementing regulations on information disclosure, establishing a national database system on contractors by requiring the public disclosure of all bidding information, thereby enhancing transparency and accountability of relevant parties; limiting fraud as a basis for eliminating unreliable contractors and goods that do not meet actual needs; and supplementing regulations on the content of bidding documents to limit the insertion of evaluation criteria, which leads to unfair competition.

To address corruption, negative practices, and waste in bidding processes, ministries, sectors, and localities need to focus on reviewing, improving, and issuing regulations and guidelines for the implementation of the Bidding Law, aiming for simplification and shifting the management mindset towards unlocking resources with a spirit of breakthrough, decentralization, and delegation of power;

The Ministry of Planning and Investment continues to build and improve the bidding management database, ensuring transparency, uniformity, and proper authority; increasing online bidding and transparency in bidding, especially publicly disclosing the list of organizations and individuals violating bidding laws, contributing to gradually reducing the situation of bid rigging, fraud, and collusion.

Ministries, departments, localities, and state-owned enterprises also need to strengthen regular inspections and audits of bidding processes to detect shortcomings, deficiencies, and violations so that they can be dealt with strictly and promptly.

Thank you, Minister!

Quyen Thanh

Source: https://tienphong.vn/bo-truong-nguyen-chi-dung-noi-ve-du-an-xoay-chuyen-tinh-the-post1713960.tpo