Government agencies disbursed a total of VND321.5 trillion ($13.87 billion) in January-October, with a faster disbursement rate recorded in the July-October period after repeated exhortations by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and other officials to support the economy amid the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a recent report by the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

A major infrastructure project that recorded a disbursement rate of over 75 percent involved construction of 11 sections of the eastern cluster of the North-South Expressway.

However, several other projects were experiencing disbursement delays.

For instance, the land acquisition and compensation project for construction of the Long Thanh International Airport in the southern province of Dong Nai has only disbursed 20.4 percent of its target due to difficulties in collecting all needed information on all the land lots involved.

Dong Nai authorities, however, had committed to disburse all the money by the end of this year and to complete acquisition of a total 5,000 hectares of land to build the first phase of the mega airport.

The My Thuan – Can Tho Expressway, a key transport project that aims to improve connectivity in the Mekong Delta region, has only disbursed 42 percent of this year’s target. Land acquisition difficulties and delays in the selection of contractors are among the main reasons given for the tardy disbursement.

Experts and brokerage analysts had said earlier that public investment was key to reviving the economy this year, making up for the shortage of capital flow from private companies and foreign direct investment companies because of pandemic impacts.

Public spending last year met 67 percent of the annual target at VND270.2 trillion ($11.6 billion), according to the Ministry of Finance.