Selecting investors without bidding
The Ministry of Construction explained that in the period from 2021 to present, 655 social housing projects (NOXH) have been implemented nationwide with a scale of 593,428 units, including: 103 completed projects with a scale of 66,755 units; 137 project projects have started construction with a scale of 114,618 units; 415 projects have been approved for investment with a scale of 412,055 units.
Thus, the investment and development of social housing is still slow, the lack of social housing supply (only reaching about 35.6% of the Project's target of 428,000 units by 2025), mainly due to the bidding work to select investors according to the provisions of the law on investment and the law on housing, which will require administrative procedures and take a long time, from 6 months to 12 months.
According to Article 84 of the Housing Law 2023, in case there are 2 or more investors interested, it is necessary to select investors according to the provisions of the law on bidding. However, according to the law, social housing projects are exempted from land use fees, the State regulates the standard profit ratio of investors, the State approves construction costs, approves appraisal of selling prices and approves subjects eligible to buy social housing.
The Ministry of Construction also stated that in the case of a social housing project with an approved construction plan, a housing development program and plan and a list and land use plan of the locality, the implementation time in order from the investment policy approval step to the selection and signing of the project contract with the investor is about 300 days.
In some localities such as Ho Chi Minh City, in the case of flexibly implementing parallel procedures and applying the minimum implementation time according to regulations, the total time for bidding to select investors in case of invitation of interest with 2 investors meeting the requirements is also over 200 days.
The Ministry of Construction stated: "Bidding only prolongs the project implementation time without bringing economic and social efficiency, even causing waste of land resources due to slow use".
Therefore, the Ministry of Construction proposed to pilot the Provincial People's Committee to assign investors of social housing projects without approving bidding to select investors based on the proposal of the professional agency, the Department of Construction.
The Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Public Security assign investors to build housing projects for the People's Armed Forces that do not go through bidding to select investors for housing projects for the armed forces.
The Vietnam General Confederation of Labor was assigned the investor of the social housing project using the Trade Union's financial resources without auctioning to select investors.
Assessing the impact of this proposal, the Ministry of Construction said that it will increase resources for social housing development, attract more businesses to invest in social housing construction, increase the supply of social housing and not incur administrative procedures, on the contrary, this solution will reduce administrative procedure costs and the time to carry out administrative procedures when conducting bidding to select investors for social housing construction investment projects.
Enterprises are allowed to rent social housing to workers in
Clause 7, Article 78 of the Housing Law 2023 only stipulates that enterprises, cooperatives, and cooperative unions are allowed to rent worker accommodation in industrial parks to individuals who are employees in their enterprises or organizations to rent them out, but does not allow the above enterprises and organizations to rent social housing for their employees to live in.
Currently, many workers in industrial parks do not have the ability to rent social housing, do not have enough money to rent commercial apartments at high prices... so workers have to rent houses built spontaneously by people, which are four-room level 4 rooms with an area of only about 9-10m2, lack of clean water, polluted environment, high rental prices, no social infrastructure, and accompanying technical infrastructure, leading to not ensuring the quality of life of workers.
Meanwhile, many businesses, especially large enterprises, and foreign-invested enterprises in industrial parks that want to rent social housing to proactively provide accommodation for their employees are not eligible for social housing.
This is considered a "bottleneck" that causes the massive development of poor quality boarding houses to cause many disasters, causing social disorder, affecting the production process of workers.
Therefore, the Ministry of Construction proposes: Enterprises, cooperatives, and cooperative unions of organizations in industrial parks are allowed to rent social housing from investors for individuals who are their employees to live in. This solution will create favorable conditions for businesses and organizations in industrial parks to take care of accommodation for their individual workers, ensuring social security and safety, and not developing poor quality boarding houses.
Proposing 7 specific policies From March 18, the Ministry of Construction announced the draft Resolution dossier of the National Assembly on piloting a number of specific mechanisms and policies for social housing development. It states a number of specific policies.
Policy 1: Establish a "National Social Housing Development Fund" from the State budget and other legal capital sources.
Policy 2: Selection of investors for social housing construction investment projects.
Policy 3: Social housing projects do not have to carry out investment policy approval procedures; the document assigning the investor to replace the document approving the investment policy.
Policy 4: simultaneously carry out planning, design, investment preparation and implementation procedures.
Policy 5: Enterprises, cooperatives, and cooperative unions in industrial parks are allowed to rent social housing from investors for individuals who are their employees to live in.
Policy 6: Regarding support, land fund creation, site clearance, and synchronous investment in technical infrastructure systems to develop social housing. Policy 7: Investors are entitled to a maximum standard profit of 13% of the total construction investment cost for the social housing construction area.
* According to the representative of the Housing and Urban Development Investment Corporation (HUD), the regulation on procedures and time to develop a social housing project is quite large. HUD recommends: The Government should consider and develop regulations and priority mechanisms for the development of social housing projects through shortening procedures and implementation time. In particular, for the selection of investors, it is necessary to apply the method of appointing bids for projects with investors who meet all the conditions (it can be according to the investor's rating on a scale through the assessment of capacity and experience records at the invitation step of interest or according to the scale of social housing projects) or shorten the bidding process by improving the capacity and responsibility of the bidding party to reduce unnecessary procedures and time such as: Amending, clarifying, and extending bidding documents; evaluating bidding documents.
- VinGroup representative proposed that the Prime Minister allow localities to designate contractors and investors. Allow localities to shorten procedures or do it in parallel. For example, planning and construction investment procedures can be done at the same time, which will shorten the time a lot.
- A representative of Viglacera Corporation said that in reality, industrial park owners want to rent buildings, then install furniture and let workers live there for free. This means that Vietnamese workers will be able to enter buildings rented by industrial park owners from social housing investors. However, this is stuck in regulations, industrial park owners are not allowed to rent social housing, and we hope to resolve this issue soon.
Prolonged procedures, businesses face difficulties in investing in social housing
According to the Hanoi Department of Construction, in 2025, Hanoi City plans to complete 8 investment projects with about 4,670 apartments and start construction of 6 new social housing projects with about 10,220 apartments. 6 new investment projects will be approved by the Hanoi People's Committee with a scale of about 10,500 apartments, added to the supply for the following years.
Mr. Tran Dinh Quan - Business Director of Evergreen Social Housing Project - said that the current investor selection procedures still take a lot of time. Therefore, it is necessary to shorten the process or apply bidding designation to units with sufficient capacity and equivalent project implementation experience. For investors, it is necessary to maintain a fixed interest rate throughout the construction process or until the project is settled.
Speaking to Lao Dong Newspaper, Mr. Nguyen The Diep - Vice President of Hanoi Real Estate Club - said that legal regulations have been adjusted in a more open direction, such as allowing the use of 20% of social housing land for commercial purposes and not valuing before handing over land to investors. However, businesses still have difficulty accessing capital. Mr. Diep proposed that in the future, there should be a mechanism for businesses to place orders and require localities to plan clean land funds with clear sanctions to hire businesses to build social housing. This solution will help reduce pressure and contribute to the completion of the target of 1 million social housing units. Dang Tien
