Removing bottlenecks, accelerating disbursement of public investment capital

On October 18, the State Audit organized the Workshop Topic 2 "Public investment: Bottlenecks and solutions from the perspective of the State Audit" within the framework of the Forum "Detecting bottlenecks in promoting economic recovery and development - The role of the State Audit".

Mr. Doan Anh Tho, Deputy State Auditor General, said: In the current period, with the difficult context of the economy negatively affecting the factors that make up GDP growth (such as consumption, private investment, net exports), public investment is being identified as one of the pillars and driving forces to promote economic recovery and growth, so the situation of slow disbursement of public investment capital and slow completion of projects that has lasted for many years needs to be overcome soon.

audit 1.jpg — Disbursement of public investment capital is still slow.

Pointing out the causes of limitations in public investment, especially slow disbursement of public investment capital, Mr. Tho assessed that each ministry, sector, locality, and project has different objective and subjective causes.

Some possible reasons include the lack of synchronization between the Law on Public Investment and the Law on State Budget as well as specialized laws; current laws do not cover all investment activities; processes, procedures and formalities are still overlapping and complicated...

Besides, there are also objective reasons such as the levels and sectors are not really active, the role and responsibility of the leaders are not promoted, somewhere there is still an avoidance mentality; the capacity of some investors and contractors does not meet the requirements...

Ms. Cao Thi Minh Nghia, Deputy Director of the Department of National Economic Synthesis ( Ministry of Planning and Investment ), said: The average disbursement rate of public investment capital in 2021 and 2022 reached about 93.56% of the plan assigned by the Prime Minister, of which 2021 reached 95.7% and 2022 reached 91.42%.

"The disbursement of public investment capital is usually low in the first months of the year, and tends to increase sharply in the last months of the year. In addition to the fear of disbursing many times, and the fear of doing capital settlement procedures many times by both investors, project management boards and contractors, mainly carried out at the end of the year, the trend of increasing disbursement at the end of the year is also due to the fundamental reason of the special nature of investment expenditure compared to regular expenditure," Ms. Nghia shared.

According to the State Audit of Specialized Sector IV, in 2023, the National Assembly approved a public investment plan with a total capital of more than 700 trillion VND, an increase of about 25% (about 140,000 billion VND) compared to the plan.
plan in 2022. This is also the year to disburse all remaining capital under the Socio-Economic Recovery and Development Program according to Resolution No. 43 of the National Assembly, so the pressure related to the progress of disbursement of public investment capital is very large.

Therefore, according to the representative of the Department of National Economic Synthesis, the most important solution in the coming time is to immediately adjust legal regulations governing public investment activities, reduce administrative procedures (licensing of raw materials, procedures for converting the purpose of using forest land, rice land, withdrawing donor capital...) in project implementation to further promote the disbursement of public investment capital and mobilize foreign currency for the country.

Good signal: Public investment disbursement is higher than the same period last year . "The absolute amount we disbursed is more than 110 trillion VND higher than last year, this is a very large number," shared the Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment.

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