Blocking land speculation, "hanging" projects

IFC One Saigon project (District 1, Ho Chi Minh City) after 17 years is still not completed.

Strongly block land speculation, projects are "suspended"

Located on the "golden land" area right at the corner of Ham Nghi - Ton Duc Thang street (District 1, Ho Chi Minh City), IFC One Saigon Project (formerly named Saigon One Tower) is still unfinished after a short time. loudly restarted.

Built on a land area of ​​6.672 m2, with 5 basement floors, 3 technical floors and 41 upper floors, IFC One Saigon started construction 17 years ago, but after 5 years of sluggish implementation, by 2011, the main project temporary suspension of construction. After changing ownership many times, IFC One Saigon is still not complete. This project has been named many times in the list of projects that make the City look bad.

Opposite Ben Thanh Market (Ho Chi Minh City), right at the busy metro station No. 1 is a rough concrete block called One Central Saigon (formerly called The Spirit of Saigon). This is a complex of commercial centers, offices, apartments, super apartments, and 6-star hotels, with a total land area of ​​more than 8.500 m2, located on the Ben Thanh quadrangle with a prime location right in the center of the district. 1 with 4 facades. This project has also gone through many owners, but no completion date has been set.

Similarly, the Lancaster Lincoln Project (District 4) invested by Trung Thuy Lancaster Co., Ltd. was started in 2017, but after constructing the underground part, it was "immobile". As for the D-One Saigon Project (Go Vap District) of DHA Company, it was approved in 2016, but until now it is still just an empty lot.

One of the new points of the Land Law 2024 is to apply sanctions to projects that change purposes, recognize land use rights, and receive land use rights transfer, while the previous law only applied revenue. return due Violations against land allocated or leased projects.

Above are just some cases of projects "hanging" for many years in Ho Chi Minh City. The 2013 Land Law stipulates that a project after being approved by the investment policy decision has a period of 12 months to implement, or 24 months if extended. If this deadline is not implemented, the project will be revoked. However, recovering these projects is not simple, especially when businesses have made basic investments on that land.

The Land Law 2024 (effective from August 1, 8) has many stricter regulations. For example, if an investment project is not used for 2024 consecutive months from the date of handover, or the land use progress is 12 months behind the progress recorded in the investment decision, it will be revoked.

In case the land is not put into use or is behind schedule, the investor is granted an extension of no more than 24 months and must pay an additional corresponding amount to the State. At the end of the extension period, if the land is still not put into use, the State will recover it, without compensation for the land, assets attached to the land and investment costs in the land.

It is necessary to take into account the case of "force majeure"

Revoking suspended projects to regenerate resources from land is very necessary, but according to experts, force majeure cases need to be taken into account, such as legal procedures lasting many years. Because businesses themselves also want to complete legal procedures as soon as possible to be able to deploy construction, sales, and recover capital.

Talking with a reporter from the Investment Newspaper, Mr. Angus Liew, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Gamuda Land Vietnam, evaluated and regulated land recovery for projects that are not implemented after the expiration of the extension period in the Land Law 2024 in order to Avoid wasting land resources. But in some cases, the extension period may be longer, for example during the Covid-19 period.

From the business's operating experience, Mr. Le Huu Nghia, General Director of Le Thanh Construction Company Limited, said that in reality, there are many force majeure cases. For example, businesses cannot implement projects due to delayed procedures related to authorities. Therefore, according to Mr. Nghia, the decree guiding the Land Law needs to supplement and clarify this content, otherwise, in many cases, businesses will "die" unjustly.

"As soon as we submitted the project documents, we had to write down a timeline, but after being approved for investment, we could not immediately implement it, because applying for an investment license and other procedures takes many years." , Mr. Nghia shared.

An open point for businesses that want to pursue project implementation when progress is behind schedule is that the Law sets out conditions for delayed implementation due to force majeure reasons such as natural disasters, enemy sabotage, and if it can be proven that the project is late due to the fault of the investor. authorities, or the fault of those performing public duties, will not be revoked. However, businesses also recommended that in the guiding decrees, there should be more detailed regulations and specific sanctions for individuals and organizations that indirectly cause projects to be behind schedule.

Along with tightened regulations in the Land Law 2024, the Real Estate Business Law 2023 has many changes related to the financial conditions of investors. For example, real estate businesses must have equity capital of not less than 20% of total investment capital for projects with land use scale of less than 20 hectares, not less than 15% of total investment capital for projects with land use scale of less than 20 hectares. Projects have a land use scale of XNUMX hectares or more and must ensure the ability to mobilize capital to implement the investment project.

In case a real estate business simultaneously implements many projects, it must have enough equity allocated to ensure the above ratio of each project to implement all projects. In addition, the Law on Real Estate Business 2023 also stipulates conditions such as credit balance limits, corporate bonds...

With such strict regulations, businesses must calculate carefully before embarking on projects to avoid spreading ineffective investments, causing projects to stagnate and waste resources.