Increasing by nearly 10%, public investment disbursement needs more momentum

(Chinhphu.vn) - At the regular Government meeting in July held on the morning of August 7, Minister of Finance Nguyen Van Thang said: The disbursement rate of public investment capital in the first 7 months of 2025 increased by nearly 10 percentage points compared to the same period last year. However, to complete the set target, ministries, branches and localities must continue to make efforts to remove obstacles, be more proactive and drastic in organizing implementation.

Minister of Finance : "Ministries, sectors and localities need to make efforts to remove obstacles to achieve the target of public investment disbursement" - Photo: VGP/Nhat Bac

Public investment disbursement exceeds the same period

Minister Nguyen Van Thang informed that in the context of transferring the 2-level government organization model, the whole country has made efforts to continue to accelerate the disbursement progress of the 2025 public investment capital plan. Accordingly, the disbursement volume in July reached VND 69,728 billion (up 7.9% compared to the accumulated disbursement up to the end of June); exceeding the same period in 2024 in both ratio and absolute number (up 10.1%, equivalent to VND 161,785.2 billion).

Notably, the disbursement rate of local budget capital reached 57.5%, 24.2% higher than the same period last year. This positive result clearly reflects the efforts of localities in implementing public investment tasks.

According to the Minister, the main reason for the above results is due to many positive changes in the policy mechanism on bidding, decentralization, and thorough delegation of power, creating more initiative and flexibility for all levels, sectors, and localities in investment preparation, capital planning management, ensuring no interruption in the implementation and disbursement of public investment capital for projects.

Public investment capital has been allocated more centrally, overcoming the situation of scattered, dispersed and wasteful investment; enhancing the autonomy, initiative and responsibility of all levels and sectors in selecting, approving and allocating capital for specific projects in accordance with development goals and orientations; ensuring publicity and transparency in the allocation of investment capital.

Central budget capital is focused on important national projects, highway projects, inter-regional projects, key projects, creating new momentum, new space for economic development, exploiting potentials, strengths and enhancing national competitiveness...

Problems affecting disbursement progress

According to statistics from the Ministry of Finance, among 42 ministries and central agencies, 4 units and 19/34 localities have disbursement rates at or above the national average. However, there are still 38 ministries, branches and 15 localities with disbursement rates lower than the average.

Faced with this reality, the Government has submitted to the National Assembly Standing Committee for consideration an adjustment to reduce the central budget capital investment plan for 2025 of a number of ministries, branches and localities; at the same time, a number of units have just been assigned to supplement new capital plans.

Based on that adjustment, the Ministry of Finance recalculated the disbursement rate according to the adjusted plan, excluding the newly added capital. As a result, 6 ministries, sectors and 23 localities achieved the average disbursement level or higher; the remaining 30 ministries, sectors and 11 localities remained below this threshold.

Although overall progress has improved, some long-standing issues have not been resolved.

Notably, difficulties related to site clearance, lack of construction materials, delays in approval and planning adjustment are prominent. In particular, the process of rearranging and reorganizing administrative units and switching to a two-tier local government model has left many localities unable to complete investment procedures for newly added capital sources.

In addition, the conversion of agricultural and forest land use purposes still faces many procedural barriers. These problems are caused by both objective (incomplete legal system, limited database) and subjective (staff capacity, lack of coordination).

To adapt to the post-reorganization apparatus, some projects have had to be temporarily suspended or their investment scale and scope reviewed, leading to the inability to continue allocating capital for implementation. Meanwhile, many problems with ODA projects have not been resolved due to incomplete investment procedures, implementation extensions, or delays in signing and taking effect of loan agreements.

Some ministries, sectors and localities are still prioritizing the completion of capital disbursement documents in 2024, leading to the 2025 plan not being implemented synchronously. Along with that, many localities such as Hung Yen, Quang Ngai, Can Tho, Lai Chau, Dien Bien, Quang Tri... are facing difficulties in budget collection, especially revenue from land - one of the important bases for allocating public investment capital.

Propose key solutions

In order to strive for the disbursement rate of public investment capital to reach 60% of the plan assigned by the Prime Minister by the end of the third quarter, complete the 2025 target of disbursing 100% of the plan, contributing to promoting the whole year's growth to reach 8% or more, the Ministry of Finance has proposed many key groups of solutions.

Firstly, local ministries and branches need to identify public investment disbursement as one of the key political tasks; heads of ministries, branches and localities must clearly identify the difficulties and causes of slow disbursement of each specific project; consider disbursement targets as the basis for assessing the level of task completion at the end of the year.

Second, resolutely implement and ensure that there are no breaks or interruptions in the implementation and disbursement of public investment capital during the period of rearranging and reorganizing administrative units at all levels, and switching to a two-level local government organization model.

Third, strictly implement the law on public investment, speed up and improve the quality right from the preparation of investment projects. At the same time, resolutely tighten discipline, strengthen inspection, supervision, and strictly handle violations.

Fourth, strengthen administrative procedure reform, apply information technology in handling public investment procedures such as appraisal of investment projects with construction components, promote the application of electronic documents, digital signatures, simplify the process of controlling expenditures and capital withdrawal requests; strengthen post-audit work in disbursing public investment capital.

The fifth is to continue focusing on removing difficulties and obstacles in site clearance and site clearance; implementing measures to control prices and quality of construction materials for public investment projects.

"The early completion of the allocation of the second and third public investment plans, including additional capital from increased budget revenue in 2024, is an urgent task, ensuring disbursement progress from now until the end of the year," the Minister noted.

Vinh Hoang

Source: https://baochinhphu.vn/tang-gan-10-giai-ngan-dau-tu-cong-can-them-luc-day-102250807104811131.htm