Promoting decentralization and delegation of authority will shorten the time for capital allocation, helping to improve the efficiency of capital use. Photo: D.T.

Promote decentralization to unlock resources

It is expected that tomorrow (October 29), the Draft Law on Public Investment Amendments will be submitted by the Government to the National Assembly. Accordingly, there are 5 groups of policies expected to be amended, in which the promotion of decentralization and delegation of power is emphasized.

Reporting to the National Assembly Standing Committee a few days ago, Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung said that the content of the amendment to the Law on Public Investment has deeply demonstrated the spirit of breakthrough, reform, decentralization, and delegation of power according to the motto "locality decides, locality does, locality is responsible"; the Central, National Assembly, and Government play the role of creating, strengthening institutional improvement and inspection and supervision; ensuring clear people, clear work, clear responsibilities, clear results; cutting down and simplifying administrative procedures, not allowing responsibility to be passed on, avoiding creating a "request - give" mechanism...

It is called a "breakthrough" because the spirit of law-making this time is directed to create development, unleash resources, especially public investment resources, to promote socio-economic development, not to make laws for "management".

National Assembly Chairman Tran Thanh Man, at the opening session of the 8th Session of the 15th National Assembly, also emphasized that in legislation, when building laws, we must shift from a management mindset to unleashing resources, strengthening decentralization, and thoroughly and substantially decentralizing power...

One example of promoting decentralization and delegation of power when amending the Law on Public Investment is that the Government has proposed to decentralize the adjustment of the medium-term public investment plan using central budget capital between ministries, central agencies and localities from the National Assembly Standing Committee to the Prime Minister. Previously, to handle this entire adjustment process, it took 11 steps and an average of 6-7 months to implement, affecting the timeliness of capital allocation and disbursement plans. However, if decentralized, 5 steps will be cut and the time will be reduced by about 3 months, allowing the capital plan to be adjusted early so that ministries, central agencies and localities have a basis for implementation, thereby promoting disbursement and improving capital use efficiency.

This, according to Minister Nguyen Chi Dung, will also create initiative for the Prime Minister in managing the medium-term public investment plan, promptly allocating capital, minimizing the current situation of "capital waiting for projects" and "projects waiting for capital", so that capital can be brought into the economy soon, infrastructure can be completed soon, and socio-economic growth can be promoted.

Similarly, along with the proposal to increase the scale of national important projects to 30,000 billion VND, the scale of group A, group B, group C projects to double the current regulations in the Law, the Government also proposed to decentralize the authority to the heads of ministries and central agencies to decide on investment policies for group A projects managed by their agencies and organizations with capital scale of less than 10,000 billion VND; group A projects from 10,000 billion VND to less than 30,000 billion VND are under the authority of the Prime Minister. Along with that, decentralize the authority to People's Committees at all levels to decide on investment policies for group B and group C projects managed by localities; decentralize the authority to Chairmen of People's Committees at all levels to adjust medium-term and annual public investment plans...

Once decentralization is promoted, the steps and procedures will be shortened, capital will be pushed into the economy faster and become effective sooner.

Maximize resources, do not leave capital waiting for projects

Another important content in the Draft Law on Public Investment amended this time is the amendment of related policy groups to improve the quality of investment preparation, resource exploitation, and capacity to implement public investment projects of localities and state-owned enterprises...

Current law stipulates that investment preparation capital must be assigned by competent authorities in the medium-term and annual plans from development investment expenditure sources, so it has not been able to mobilize all resources and affects the requirements, progress, and readiness in the investment preparation work of the Project.

- Mr. Tran Quoc Phuong, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment

Sharing this content, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Tran Quoc Phuong said that one of the important amendments will allow the use of regular expenditure sources and other legal sources to prepare for project investment.

In this revision of the Law on Public Investment, the Drafting Committee proposed amendments that allow, in addition to using development investment sources, regular expenditure sources and other legal capital sources of ministries, central agencies and localities to be used for investment preparation work in order to create readiness and initiative in implementing investment preparation activities.

Other proposals include allowing state-owned enterprises to be the governing bodies for implementing public investment projects according to the Prime Minister's decision; allowing project management boards and public service units under ministries, central and local agencies to prepare reports proposing project investment policies...

Investment procedures and project preparation will also be simplified, facilitating the preparation and implementation of public investment projects. At the same time, the Prime Minister - for central budget capital, and the Provincial People's Council - for local budget capital, will be allowed to approve investment policies for newly started projects implemented in two consecutive medium-term public investment plans exceeding the limit of 20%, but not exceeding 50% of the current public investment plan capital...

For a long time, project preparation has been one of the major problems in public investment. The issue of capital waiting for projects also comes from here. Minister Nguyen Chi Dung himself has repeatedly emphasized that the worrying issue with public investment disbursement is not "where is the money", but "first" - how to prepare the project.

When these policies are passed, facilitating project preparation will also facilitate the disbursement of public investment capital.

“We are afraid that in the future, there will be a situation where projects are waiting for capital because there are too many projects ready and disbursed too quickly,” Deputy Minister Tran Quoc Phuong said jokingly, but that is also a reality that can happen when policies are amended to facilitate investment preparation, implementation, disbursement, as well as to unblock investment resources. At that time, the efficiency of public investment will be improved and contribute significantly to creating a foundation for economic and social growth and development.