This morning (August 15), the Lao Dong Newspaper (NLĐ) organized the 2024 Economic Forum with the content "Removing bottlenecks in public investment disbursement".

According to Mr. To Dinh Tuan - Editor-in-Chief of NLĐ Newspaper, the forum was organized to contribute to finding solutions, removing bottlenecks, and unblocking public investment resources to attract non-social investment for the development of Ho Chi Minh City.

1 dong of public investment attracts 10 dong from society

At the forum, Dr. Tran Du Lich - Chairman of the Advisory Council for the implementation of Resolution 98 of the National Assembly - affirmed that public investment is one of the three pillars of economic growth, including: public investment, consumption and export. However, at present, the disbursement of public investment in Ho Chi Minh City is quite slow, not reaching the set target.

“In public investment disbursement, there is often a situation of "the first 6 months of the year are leisurely, the last 6 months are rushed", so the impact is not much. The sooner the disbursement is, the higher the impact on economic growth" - Mr. Tran Du Lich said.

Regarding the reason for slow public investment disbursement, Mr. Tran Du Lich said that the city has encountered too many bottlenecks. These bottlenecks are the process, procedures for compensation and site clearance, bidding... Even some projects, when cleared and implemented, are stuck in planning work.

"To achieve the target of 95% disbursement by the end of this year, Ho Chi Minh City needs to improve its institutions, procedures, and regulations. At the same time, the city must take advantage of Resolution 98 to further improve procedures and regulations according to a special mechanism.

If the effort to remove the bottleneck is successful, the city can return to the stage where 1 dong of budget investment will attract 10 dong from non-state resources," the expert affirmed.

Change your approach

Sharing the same view, Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Hoa - Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ho Chi Minh City State Financial Investment Company (HFIC) - commented that there is a situation where public investment projects have excess money but cannot spend it due to congestion in procedures, processes, and sequences...

“We need to boldly change our approach and socialize public investment projects to solve bottlenecks. That means when there is a policy to approve a project, the city needs to assign it to the private sector. When they finish and accept the project, we will use public investment money to buy back that project,” Mr. Hoa proposed.

According to Dr. Nguyen Quoc Viet - Deputy Director of the Institute for Economic and Policy Research, Hanoi National University, the fact that Ho Chi Minh City has only disbursed 15% is too low compared to the general level of about 30%.

According to Mr. Viet, to resolve this situation, in the short term, it is necessary to focus on aspects such as procedures, mechanisms for removing obstacles, general coordination; site clearance; and basic material mines such as soil, sand, and gravel. At the same time, the authorities must also remove bottlenecks in capital sources combined with...

"In the long term, planning work in general, including land use planning and traffic planning, must also be improved, synchronized, and proactive.

In addition, the city must make good use of special mechanisms from Resolution 98 to invest in inter-regional infrastructure, especially projects such as the Ho Chi Minh City - Moc Bai (Tay Ninh) expressway and a number of belt roads," Mr. Viet acknowledged.

Many other experts also commented that although Ho Chi Minh City has been and is vigorously accelerating public investment disbursement, the efficiency is still not high, the reason is too many bottlenecks. The current bottlenecks are the planning, approval, bidding mechanisms and the way of operation and coordination between functional agencies and investors is not synchronized and smooth.

Besides, Resolution 98 is currently only in the exploratory stage, without any strong solutions. Therefore, it is necessary to clearly decentralize power so that Ho Chi Minh City can rise up and solve this problem effectively.

On behalf of the bank, Mr. Nguyen Duc Lenh - Deputy Director of the State Bank, Ho Chi Minh City Branch - public investment activities have a positive impact on credit and credit growth of commercial banks in two aspects.

" First, credit meets the capital demand for the implementation of infrastructure development projects and socio-economic development programs. At the same time, in this process, when public investment projects are implemented, it will lead to the development of many related sectors, production, trade and services. This factor also increases the capital demand and stimulates credit growth. This is the most positive impact on credit growth from the perspective of the socio-economic environment and placed in the relationship between banks - customers - the economy.

Second, public investment activities create favorable circulation and flow of capital in the economy. This meaning comes from the "spillover" effect of public investment, of implementing infrastructure development projects, leading to the development of many related sectors. From there, cash flow is created, capital circulation is favorable, which is a very important factor in promoting credit growth, thanks to the ability to absorb capital from the economy increases, production and business develop, and credit capital flows "steadily".

Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City: Public investment disbursement is still a concern for the city . In the first 6 months of the year, public investment disbursement in Ho Chi Minh City only reached 13.8%. Chairman of the City Phan Van Mai expressed his concern and requested to review the problems and find solutions.

The Prime Minister criticized 33 ministries and 28 localities for slow disbursement of public investment . The Prime Minister severely criticized ministries, central agencies and localities for not doing a good job in disbursing public investment capital, of which 33 ministries, agencies and 28 localities had disbursement rates below average.