Strictly regulate criteria for determining industry linkage project chains
Discussing at the Hall on the draft Investment Law (amended), the National Assembly deputies said that, in the face of global fluctuations and the country's economic development requirements in the new period, amending the Investment Law is necessary and urgent. At the same time, they highly appreciated the reform spirit in the draft Law, especially the addition of special incentives, more power to investment mechanisms in industrial parks and economic zones, and acknowledged the progress in administrative procedures and reduction of intermediary levels.
Concerned about the content of investment policy approval, National Assembly Deputy Tran Quoc Tuan ( Vinh Long ) stated that Resolution No. 68-NQ/TW of the Central Committee on private economic development clearly states the requirement to form industry linkage chains, value chains, and supply chains. To have these linkage chains, there must be a legal mechanism to ensure that investors can synchronously implement inter-industry project chains, and cannot bid for each project separately.
According to delegate Tran Quoc Tuan, in reality, many large investors have proposed a series of projects on renewable energy, new energy, supporting industries... in line with industry and local planning. These are projects that have the potential to create regional growth momentum and strong spillover.
However, the 2020 Investment Law and the draft Law still do not have a mechanism to allow an investor to be approved for the entire project chain at the same time. “The result is a loss of synchronization in infrastructure and operation, prolonged administrative procedures, reduced motivation to propose large-scale projects and unintentionally blocking projects that we urgently need to achieve high growth targets. This is an institutional bottleneck that is very obvious but has not yet been resolved,” said delegate Tran Quoc Tuan.
From there, delegate Tran Quoc Tuan proposed that it is necessary to add a new case in Clause 4, Article 23: the project chain includes both new investment projects and operating projects proposed by investors to synchronously connect technical infrastructure or form industry clusters, value chains, product and service supply chains, ensuring effective exploitation and operation; this content is assigned to the Government to specify in detail.
Such a regulation, according to delegate Tran Quoc Tuan, will directly institutionalize the spirit of Resolution No. 68-NQ/TW, especially the requirement to develop value chain and supply chain industry clusters. At the same time, it will not affect the principle of transparent competition, because this regulation is only applied when investors proactively propose projects, and that project chain must be consistent with industry planning, local planning and not subject to auction or bidding according to the Land Law and the Bidding Law. When this regulation is established, the Investment Law will be the main driving force to promote the "machine" of administrative procedures to run faster, creating momentum for higher economic growth.
To avoid abuse and ensure transparency of the above proposed content, delegate Tran Quoc Tuan noted that the Government needs to provide clear and strict guidance on the criteria for determining industry-linked project chains; information disclosure and transparency mechanisms; close supervision and other related contents.
The need to end the “one size fits all” mechanism
Emphasizing that the investment policy acceptance mechanism is the first "entrance" for all capital flows, determining the cost, speed and predictability of businesses, National Assembly Deputy Le Hoang Anh (Gia Lai) said that amending Article 24 must be based on three pillars: selective retention, principled removal, and risk-based design.
Therefore, delegate Le Hoang Anh proposed to keep the 8 extremely high-risk cases related to national defense, security and people protection. And, it is necessary to end the “one size fits all” mechanism, because currently Article 25 applies the same procedure to completely different risk projects. Low-risk projects are unnecessarily prolonged by 3 to 6 months while high-risk projects lack enhanced monitoring mechanisms. For example, extremely high-risk nuclear power plants go through the same approval process as low-risk 5ha housing projects that can be remedied if there are planning errors.
Delegate Le Hoang Anh also said that it is necessary to eliminate regulations that overlap with specialized laws, avoid "pre-inspection on top of pre-inspection"; have flexible mechanisms for strategic projects, semiconductors, data centers, digital infrastructure, and new renewable energy. According to the delegate, it is possible to reduce the land and population threshold to 50% for projects on the national priority list but with strict conditions on finance, environment, and disbursement capacity.
Sharing the same view, National Assembly Deputy Ha Sy Dong (Quang Tri) said that Article 25 on projects requiring investment policy approval is a content that needs to be carefully considered. The draft Law has expanded many groups of projects that must request policy approval, including commercial housing projects and urban areas regardless of scale. If regulated like that, many projects will have to wait for a long time for decisions.
Delegate Ha Sy Dong proposed that policy approval only be required for housing projects and urban areas with a land use scale of over 50 hectares or a population scale of over 3,000 people; expansion projects of less than 20% do not need to re-apply for policy.
Also interested in this content, National Assembly Deputy La Thanh Tan (Hai Phong) suggested that the draft Law should stipulate more clearly the quantitative criteria in determining projects subject to investment policy approval; not only based on capital scale or land area but also considering factors of environmental impact, infrastructure, population, security and defense. Only when there is a clear and unified "measurement", can we ensure both decentralization and control of power, avoiding arbitrariness in implementation.
According to delegate La Thanh Tan, this has been mentioned in the Government's Report at the scope level but there is no specific threshold for agencies and localities to apply consistently. The Draft Law currently allows in some cases that the agency approving the policy also approves the investor; if the conditions, principles and criteria for simultaneous implementation are not clearly specified, it will easily lead to "asking - giving" and reduce public competition in selecting investors. Therefore, the principle of separating the two steps - "approving the investment policy" and "selecting/approving the investor" - should be clarified or only allowed simultaneously in truly special cases with a strict legal basis.
Source: https://daibieunhandan.vn/du-thao-luat-dau-tu-sua-doi-co-thuoc-do-ro-rang-bao-dam-vua-phan-cap-vua-kiem-soat-quyen-luc-10397417.html
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