The disbursement of public investment capital has recently been done quite well thanks to measures from the Government. Economic expert Dr. Nguyen Minh Phongspoke to the Customs Newspaper about this issue.

Dr. Nguyen Minh Phong

According to the latest report from the Ministry of Finance, the disbursement by the end of October was estimated at 68.26% of the plan assigned by the Prime Minister at the beginning of the year. How would you assess this progress?

- It can be said that 2020 has been the best year of public investment disbursement in the past five years in terms of progress. In particular, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, with social distancing solutions, the disbursement rate of social investment capital of most countries slowed down, not many countries succeeded in this work like Vietnam. This is the result of thanks to many drastic measures from the Government since the beginning of the year.

Firstly, that is the assignment of personal responsibility forthe heads of agencies, departments and sectors in ensuring disbursement progress. Along with that is theflexible mechanism in capital adjustment. For example, many projects that were not disbursed were immediately reported for capital transfer shortly.

Secondly, the above result is also due to the removal of problems in terms of mechanisms and policies to create more openness for management levels in public investment. In particular, the revised Public Investment Law effective from January 1, 2020 with new regulations and simpler procedures solvesmany problems and difficulties.

Thirdly, local authorities and the Government have identified the importance of disbursing public investment disbursement and considered this one of the measures to increase social investment capital to help develop the economy of the country and each locality. Therefore, all agencies have raised their responsibilities and carried out this work more drastically for the best results.

From now to the end of fiscal year 2020, 100% of the plan for public investment will be likely to be disbursed.

Which solution should be focused on to fulfill the public investment disbursement plan set out?

- With the remaining time of 2020, the public investment disbursement task is still remarkable - a challenge for all ministries, agencies and localities. However, solutions are almost there and we've been doing pretty well. This has been reflected by results we have seen.

The most important thing is the responsibility of the head including the responsibility, authority and conditions to participate in the immediate handling of violations. In fact, public investment is one of the fields that have the most losses, waste, negativity and corruption. Therefore, it is necessary to raiseresponsibility for the head more and take tough measures against this situation. At the same time, it is necessary to avoid increasing public debt as well as misbalancing the budget.

In addition, flexible mechanisms must be developed to govern projects, adjust capital and assign the power of adjustment more quickly.

Information on public investment must transparent and regularly disclosed. Thereby, ministries, agencies, localities and investors must focus on solving difficulties and problems in the investment for each specific project. In particular, it is necessary to support enterprises in site clearance, early handover sites to construction contractors and resolutely recover capital for projects that are slow in the implementation to allocate capital to projects that can implement and attract investment.