Proposal to empower commune level to decide on implementing national target programs

National Assembly delegate Ha Sy Huan proposed decentralizing the decision to organize the implementation of the national target program to the commune level. Photo: Pham Dong

On the morning of December 5, the National Assembly discussed the investment policy for the national target program on new rural areas, sustainable poverty reduction, and socio -economic development in ethnic minority and mountainous areas by 2035.

Participating in giving opinions, delegate Ha Sy Huan ( Thai Nguyen Delegation) highly agreed with the policy of merging 3 national target programs into 1 program in the 2026-2035 period.

Regarding decentralization of program management, delegates highly appreciated the program implementation mechanism in the direction of: Central management in general and issuance of policy mechanisms, guidance, supervision, inspection, decentralization, and thorough delegation of power along with resource allocation to localities in the spirit of "locality decides, locality does and locality is responsible".

However, this mechanism needs to be clarified and implemented more thoroughly. Clause 5, Article 1 and Article 3 of the draft resolution have delegated the authority to the provincial People's Council to decide on resource allocation and program implementation.

From practice, delegates said that this decentralization procedure is still cumbersome, time-consuming, lacks initiative at the grassroots level and makes it difficult to avoid the situation of scattered and fragmented investment that was pointed out in the previous stage.

The program's investment contents are mostly infrastructure, technology, and livelihood models serving people in communes and villages.

The delegate said that currently, implementing two-level local government, the commune level has directly managed the area, clearly understanding the subjects, cultural conditions, terrain, and livelihoods of the locality.

Therefore, to implement the motto "people are the masters" and increase the effectiveness of grassroots investment, delegates proposed that the National Assembly consider adjusting the decentralization of program implementation management more strongly and thoroughly to grassroots authorities, in the direction of decentralizing to the commune level to decide on program implementation. The provincial level plays the role of guiding, inspecting, supervising, providing technical support and administrative procedures.

In particular, the local authority, specifically the People's Council and the People's Committee at the commune level, is empowered to decide on the list, implementation plan, and appropriate model in order of priority for each stage; to decide on integrating, coordinating, or synchronizing components, capital sources of the program, and projects in the locality to avoid duplicate, scattered, fragmented investment, and missed tasks.

Delegate Mai Van Hai speaks. Photo: Pham Dong

Delegate Mai Van Hai (Thanh Hoa Delegation) said that under the conditions of merging provinces and implementing the 2-level local government model, the scale of the province and the scale of the communes are much larger than before.

This leads to a huge demand for investment capital for infrastructure and the completion of new rural criteria after the reorganization. Many mountainous provinces and communes still face many budget difficulties, while for most communes, the main source of investment is land use rights grant money for investment in new rural construction.

Now this source of capital is not as good as the previous period, the locality only receives 80 to 85% of land use fees so it will be even more difficult to find counterpart capital to implement the program.

To ensure the feasibility of capital sources, delegates proposed to increase the central budget balance and need solutions to mobilize other legal capital sources such as capital from enterprises, cooperatives, and people to implement the target program.

It is necessary to increase central budget capital for the socio-economic development component of ethnic minority and mountainous areas.

Source: https://laodong.vn/thoi-su/de-nghi-trao-quyen-cho-cap-xa-quyet-dinh-thuc-hien-chuong-trinh-muc-tieu-quoc-gia-1620507.ldo