Lao Dong Newspaper recently had an interview with Lawyer, Master Pham Thanh Tuan (Hanoi Bar Association) about the new points of Decree 115/2024/ND-CP.
What are the new breakthroughs in Decree 115/2024/ND-CP regarding determining investment projects using land that must organize bidding to select investors? How has this regulation removed previous bottlenecks?
- Previously, in order to guide the implementation of the 2013 Land Law and the 2013 Bidding Law, the Government issued Decree No. 25/2020/ND-CP detailing a number of articles of the Bidding Law on investor selection.
Projects that must select investors according to Decree 25/2020/ND-CP include projects: Urban areas; works with commercial housing functions; commercial and service works and projects that must be organized for bidding according to regulations of specialized laws and laws on socialization. For projects in the field of commercial housing (for example, "urban areas"), bidding is clearly and specifically regulated.
However, for projects that must be bid under specialized laws, the law on socialization is specific to which projects, the mechanism for the State to reclaim land for these types of projects is unclear under the land law. This is the reason why projects under specialized laws (for example, school construction projects, sports facilities projects, etc.) are almost unable to organize bidding to select investors.
To overcome the above shortcomings, Article 4 of Decree 115/2024/ND-CP stipulates that investment projects using land that must be organized for bidding to select investors include (i) urban area construction investment projects; rural residential area projects and (ii) projects under the law on management of sectors and fields.
Clause 2, Article 4 of the Decree clarifies the scope of projects that must organize bidding to select investors according to the provisions of the law on industry and sector management, including 10 groups of projects in various fields.
Thus, I believe that Decree 115/2024/ND-CP and Decree 23/2024/ND-CP issued earlier have contributed to synchronizing and perfecting the legal mechanism for selecting investors in all areas of social infrastructure, especially the real estate sector. Bidding activities to select investors to implement projects using land will ensure competition, fairness, and transparency. This is something that localities as well as businesses are very interested in because of its great impact on attracting investment, especially in the real estate market.
The investor selection procedure of Decree 115/2024/ND-CP is said to have simplified the procedure, significantly reducing the time compared to before. What are the details, sir?
- The goal when developing policies on investor selection that competent authorities aim for is to continue to simplify procedures, reduce time and costs in investor selection activities; improve the effectiveness and efficiency of state management of bidding activities to select investors to implement projects using land.
It can be said that Decree 115/2024/ND-CP has simplified the process and procedures, cut time and costs in investor selection activities; thoroughly decentralized to localities in bidding for investor selection.
Firstly, integrating and cutting down on some intermediate procedures such as: Cutting down on procedures for preparing, appraising and approving plans for selecting investors; appraising interest invitation documents, lists of technically qualified investors; allowing the preparation of bidding documents and interest invitation documents at the same time as the process of carrying out procedures for planning and approving investment policies.
In particular, allowing the preparation of bidding documents and expression of interest documents at the same time as the planning and investment approval procedures specified in Clause 1, Article 14 is expected to significantly shorten the time in the process of selecting investors compared to before; avoiding the need for localities to "wait" for legal procedures to be completed before implementing the next step.
Second, abolish the procedure requiring the provincial People's Committee to consult the Ministry of Planning and Investment on the dossier of approval of investors to implement projects under the Prime Minister's authority to decide on investment policies as stipulated in Decree 31/2021/ND-CP. This is reasonable because abolishing the above procedure aims to enhance the initiative and responsibility of localities in the process of organizing the selection of investors.
Third, only the minimum time for investors to prepare bidding documents is stipulated; the time for preparing, appraising, and submitting for approval of bidding contents is decided by the competent person and he/she is responsible for progress and quality. In our opinion, this is a very new and progressive point that helps localities to be proactive and flexible in organizing the selection of investors.
What do you expect from the new points of Decree 115/2024/ND-CP?
- Overall, it can be said that the provisions in Decree 115/2024/ND-CP are considered a "plus point", which will contribute to speeding up progress, transparency and improving the efficiency of the process of selecting investors to implement projects using land. The above provisions are expected to promote the process of selecting investors in a simple and transparent manner, thereby contributing to promoting the development of the real estate market in the coming period.
