State-owned housing rental debt of more than 800 billion VND, when will it be collected?
At the Hanoi People's Council meeting on December 11, delegate Vu Ngoc Anh (Bac Tu Liem) raised the question: In mid-2022, the Hanoi People's Committee reported that for the city's state-owned housing fund, the total debt receivable was 1,112.5 billion VND.
By the second quarter of 2024, only VND 227.9 billion, equivalent to 20.5%, had been collected. Although according to the plan, this task must be completed in 2023, after nearly 2 years, the amount of debt to be collected is still large, with the risk of revenue loss if not managed well.
Delegates requested the directors of the Departments of Finance and Construction and the leaders of the Hanoi Housing Management and Development Company to clearly report the causes, responsibilities and progress of completion of the recovery.
Responding to delegates, Chairman of Hanoi Housing Management and Development Company Limited Nguyen Tien Dung said that the company's total debt receivable through housing funds is 1,112.5 billion VND.
The debt collection process from 2022 to June 2024, the total collection is 227 billion VND, the remaining debt is more than 800 billion VND. The company determined that the debt collection focuses on 9 housing funds and 9 specific contents, on that basis, it has proposed some contents, such as people are allowed to pay late payments according to regulations.
There are currently some problems related to large debts concentrated with specialized housing funds, temporary housing funds serving old apartment renovation projects, and relocation of dangerous housing, which the company is continuing to handle.
"For all cases of circulating debt and outstanding debt, the company is coordinating with processing units and will basically collect all of them. For bad debts related to mechanisms and policies, the company has grouped them and reported to the City People's Committee to have a plan for each type," said Mr. Nguyen Tien Dung.
Many "tough" measures to collect arrears
Director of the Department of Construction Vo Nguyen Phong added that the units have divided this debt into 3 main types: recoverable circulating debt, difficult-to-collect debt and bad debt with low recovery ability, on that basis, they have reported to the City People's Committee and have been approved for implementation solutions.
"For recoverable circulating debt, units are focusing on urging. In cases of financial obligation violations, the city has made a decision to recover.
Recently, the city has issued 33 decisions to reclaim housing funds from violators. The Department of Construction, Hanoi Housing Management and Development Company Limited and local authorities are reclaiming or enforcing the repossession.
For units that are slow to pay debts, records are also prepared for the city to issue a decision to recover them. Recently, units have recovered tens of thousands of square meters in resettlement apartments and commercial housing.
Regarding bad debts that are difficult to collect and low recovery ability due to problems with mechanisms and policies, in the near future, we will focus on preparing documents for auctioning lease rights," said the Director of the Department of Construction.
Director of the Department of Finance Nguyen Xuan Luu provided additional answers on the issue of bad debt: When determining the debt, the city classified and identified diverse legal status, diverse creditors and diverse uses of rental housing. There are no specific regulations for each type of housing, no enforcement mechanism, leading to difficulties, with some debts being quite long.
“The City People’s Committee has established a Debt Collection Steering Committee, issued a plan, and has taken very strong measures such as enforcing landlords. These measures have been effective,” said Mr. Nguyen Xuan Luu.
Also participating in answering the above content, Vice Chairman of the City People's Committee Ha Minh Hai said that the city has a very important project to manage public assets, with specific assignments and a roadmap.
In which, the city's advisory units are assigned to report to the Government to issue Decree No. 180/2024 regulating the management, use and exploitation of houses and land that are public assets not used for residential purposes, assigned to organizations with the function of managing and trading local houses for management and exploitation. This is an important basis for handling the existence of this special housing fund in Hanoi.
