At the National Meeting of Nationwide, commenting on the draft legal documents in the field of finance - budget, organized by the Ministry of Finance on the afternoon of May 26, 2025, representatives of Hai Phong City People's Committee made a number of important proposals related to the principle of competent authority and stronger decentralization orientation for local authorities.
The city said it is continuing to carefully study the contents of the draft to have a complete and detailed comments document sent to the Ministry of Finance in the coming time.
Hai Phong representatives focused on recommending two main groups of contents: First, delimiting authority in organizing local governments at two levels; second, proposing to increase decentralization and delegation of power in a number of areas, especially related to specific mechanisms.
Regarding the first content, Hai Phong said that the principle of transferring authority between all levels should be more specified. Accordingly, if a task is present by the district level but after arranging the administrative unit no longer the district level, it is advisable to be assigned to the commune level if the capacity is sufficient. In case the commune level is not assumed, it will be transferred to the provincial level.
The city representative especially noted in areas such as public investment, bidding and land management should be specified for easy implementation. For example, in bidding for land use projects related to many communes, if the commune level is still assigned, it will be difficult to organize. The city proposes to supplement the plan to assign the provincial -level specialized agencies, such as the Land Fund Development Center, taking on the role of the lead in these cases to ensure consistency and efficiency.
Regarding the second content, Hai Phong recommends that the Ministry of Finance and the Government continue to study and expand the authority of localities in the fields identified in the proposal to replace Resolution 35 on special mechanisms for Hai Phong City, expected to be submitted to the National Assembly at this session.
In addition to the proposals in the resolution, Hai Phong proposed decentralizing the authority to divest state capital from enterprises to localities. According to regulations, the list of divestment criteria and criteria for classifying state-owned enterprises is still approved by the Prime Minister. This leads to a situation where many state-owned enterprises with foreign joint ventures in Hai Phong are not allowed to increase charter capital, affecting the ability to expand production and business.
Similarly, many public service units with very small capital scales such as employment support centers also have to submit to the Prime Minister for very simple capital procedures. The representative of Hai Phong City said that this is a bottleneck that needs to be resolved by decentralizing more strongly to the locality, creating conditions for businesses and public service units to be proactive in their operations.
"Hai Phong's expectation is that these proposals will be compiled by the Ministry of Finance and reported to the Government to soon have timely solutions, in line with the spirit of decentralization and delegation of power that the Central Government has directed", the city representative emphasized.
