Real estate policy repair encouraged, photo Le Toan

The government on August 7 issued Resolution No.124/NQ-CP, which requires related ministries and sectors to accelerate the establishment of trading real estate centres to help make the market more transparent.

According to the resolution, the government requires the Ministry of Construction to work with localities and businesses to push up implementation of large-scale and long-delayed real estate projects.

The move followed hot on the heels of discussions on solving issues in the real estate market at a conference between local authorities and property businesses, chaired by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh days previously.

The working group, led by Deputy Minister of Construction Nguyen Van Sinh, has worked with around the developers of 180 housing and urban area projects since it was established last year in Ho Chi Minh City. Among those, almost 70 projects have been guided for continuous implementation. In Hanoi, over 700 projects have been on the radar of the local authorities, with around 420 of those already offered guidance for implementation.

According to the Ministry of Construction, most of the problems belong to the rights of localities, but cannot be fully applied due to weak capacity in law implementation.

“Moreover, there are many difficulties as projects were prolonged for years while the legal regulations have continuously changed over the years and left projects behind,” Sinh said.

Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Do Thanh Trung said that the main obstacles relate to investment procedures and project implementation.

“To deal with this, the Ministry of Planning and Investment has revised regulations related to investor selection, approval procedures, adjustment of ventures and many others on the Law on Bidding and these revisions will help the implementation work well,” Trung said.

However, Trung stressed that there were still many issues related to projects that have been approved before the Law on Investment was implemented. To solve the problem, the Ministry of Planning and Investment coordinated with other ministries are developing a set of general guidelines which are expected to be issued this month.

Updating the implementation of the social housing credit package programme of $5 billion, the State Bank of Vietnam released that up to now, nine provincial People’s Committees have sent a list of 23 projects to participate. Apart from those, Phu Tho province announced three projects. Those 26 projects are expected to have credit of $540 million of total loan demand.

The prime minister asked for more reviews of the legal framework. In particular, he said it is necessary to accelerate the establishment of real estate trading platforms to promote the self-adjusting ability of the market and limit administrative intervention. Meanwhile, ministries and local authorities must focus on and expeditiously complete the planning and zoning work to ensure the market runs smoothly.

“To increase total supply and aggregate demand in the market, monetary policy should be proactive, flexible, timely, and more effective. In addition, it is necessary to speed up the consideration of reducing VAT, accelerate the disbursement of public investment, and implement national target programmes,” the PM stressed.