Reasons for needing to amend the 2024 Land Law
This Ministry stated that after 1 year of implementing the Land Law, it shows that, in addition to the achieved results, there are still some shortcomings and problems that require continued research, amendment and supplementation of the Land Law, specifically as follows:
The current land use planning and planning system according to the provisions of the Land Law is not in accordance with the model of organizing local government at 02 levels; the regulation of having to establish an annual district-level land use plan leads to increased procedures, extended land access time, and slow land use. The 2024 Land Law has allowed places with urban and rural planning to not have to establish land use planning but use this planning as a land management tool.
However, in reality, the coverage rate of urban and rural planning nationwide is still low, in many cases not covered by administrative boundaries, leading to some localities, despite having established urban and rural planning, still having to establish land use planning, causing overlap and waste.
The implementation of land allocation and land lease is mainly through auction of land use rights, bidding to select investors to implement projects using land depends on the order and procedures according to the provisions of the law on property auctions and the law on bidding, so it takes a lot of time to prepare the project, while in many cases, it is still not possible to select truly capable investors, leading to prolonged project implementation time, slow land use, affecting the ability to attract investment.
In addition, for large-scale projects with mixed functions, high technical requirements, and a role in promoting local or regional development, investors with outstanding capacity are needed.
However, the current bidding mechanism has caused the implementation process to be prolonged and it may not be possible to select an investor that truly meets the requirements as expected.
In addition, the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment believes that the mandatory regulation on auctioning land use rights for headquarters land funds, surplus working facilities, land recovered from equitization, divestment of state-owned enterprises to serve economic development (including cases of exemption, reduction of land use fees or land rental) prolongs the time, increases procedures and compliance costs.
This causes particular difficulties for projects on the investment incentive list that need to use the above land fund in the context of implementing the 2-level local government model and merging administrative units, central and local agencies.
Many regulations on land recovery and compensation land prices need to be amended
The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment also pointed out that the current Law does not have regulations on land recovery to implement projects with specific requirements for investment locations, emergency and urgent construction investment projects serving political and foreign tasks; projects in free trade zones, international financial centers; logistics, tourism, commercial services, cultural industries projects... Some projects using land with large areas, contributing to promoting local socio-economic development, contributing large revenues to the state budget, creating many jobs for local workers, contributing to building an autonomous economy but there are no regulations on the State reclaiming land, causing difficulties in the process of land access and project implementation.
According to the provisions of the Land Law, compensation land prices are specific land prices, resettlement land prices are determined according to the land price list, while specific land valuation methods still face many difficulties, not ensuring absolute accuracy. This makes people whose land is recovered often require high compensation prices or need to be compensated in land or allocated resettlement land to increase benefits, causing difficulties in compensation, site clearance, and arising complaints; in some cases, it is not guaranteed equality between the implementation of rights and obligations of people whose land is recovered, pushing up compensation, support, and resettlement costs, affecting investment efficiency, especially public investment.
