Amending the Law on Bidding to unblock capital flows for the economy

Choose the best value, not the lowest price

Speaking on the draft Law on the State Budget (amended), the draft Law on amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Bidding, the Law on Investment under the public-private partnership method... recently, General Secretary To Lam emphasized many important directions: Law making must be one step ahead, ensuring high predictability, in line with reality and the requirements of rapid development.

"The bidding is very serious, the crime is slow to develop, the quality of poor quality, the loss of cadres and the loss of cadres are not economical. So what the bidding goals are to do while the target is to accelerate the speed, get the best works" - General Secretary said and required to cure these diseases.

Discussing with Lao Dong Newspaper about amending the Bidding Law, Dr. Ta Dinh Hoa ( Academy of Finance) said that in the past, Vietnam has amended the Bidding Law many times, but the amendment only stopped at a few provisions, not changing the spirit of the Law.

"The goal of the Bidding Law is not only to be a technical barrier to prevent corruption and negativity, but also to aim to select reputable contractors, speed up progress and make an important contribution to the country's economic development" - Dr. Ta Dinh Hoa emphasized.

The recent practice of bidding laws has done a good job of preventing and combating negativity and corruption. However, current laws have not ensured the goal of unlocking resources and promoting economic development. Many projects are behind schedule, causing waste. Many goods such as medicine and medical supplies are not of guaranteed quality.

According to Dr. Ta Dinh Hoa, switching from the lowest price selection criteria to the best value can be considered a breakthrough spirit. For example, when choosing a school for children, good schools often do not have the cheapest price.

Choosing the best value criterion instead of the lowest price means changing the choice from qualitative to determinative. This will be a difficult task, requiring contractor selection workers to have high synthesis ability, especially needing fairness, fairness, and integrity when selecting contractors.

Dr. Ta Dinh Hoa also expressed that amending the Law on Bidding also needs to clearly stipulate the work, the person, and the responsibility to ensure a smooth bidding process. During the implementation process, wherever there is a mistake, it must be handled there instead of blocking work.

Agreeing with this view, Mr. Nguyen Quoc Hiep - Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Construction Contractors - said that according to international practice, package prices only account for 30% of the assessed value. Meanwhile, the Bidding Law takes the lowest price criterion as unreasonable. This needs to change to ensure the quality of bidding.

Empowering investors to make decisions

Not only changing the criteria for selecting bidding packages, one of the breakthroughs in amending the Bidding Law this time is expected to be the bold decentralization of authority for investors to choose the form of bidding.

Explaining this issue at the 9th session of the National Assembly, Minister of Finance Nguyen Van Thang said that the current Bidding Law stipulates that open bidding is a form of priority application. Other forms of contractor selection are only applied when specific conditions are met.

However, according to the drafting agency, this regulation does not ensure that investors and competent authorities are able to choose to apply other forms such as bidding to speed up the progress of bidding packages and projects.

Therefore, it is necessary to supplement the principle of allowing investors and competent persons, based on the scale and nature of the package, to decide to apply one of the forms of contractor selection (such as bidding, bidding, ordering, assigning tasks or other forms) on the basis of ensuring quality, progress, efficiency and accountability.

"This empowerment is aimed at implementing the policy of decentralization and thorough decentralization in bidding activities, raising the role and responsibility of the investor, the competent person; contributing to speeding up the implementation of the investment project, especially projects that implement the national political tasks, important and urgent projects or have specific requirements to be completed urgently to ensure the progress of the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister," display.

Mr. Nguyen Quoc Hiep - Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Construction Contractors - said that allowing investors to proactively choose the form of bidding will help reduce cumbersome procedures.

Mr. Hiep for example: In bidding practice, there are very large projects but small units still participate in competition with big companies. Meanwhile, the bidding law is currently taking the lowest price as a measure, resulting in a contractor by 48%. This looks good on the outside, but the nature has caused great consequences. Because when building the bidding package price, the units have calculated the price very close. Construction units only have 6-8%profit. If discounted up to 48%, it cannot be profitable. This can only be "suicide" behavior or interrupt the bidding process.

Another issue that needs attention is that currently, we are regulating the combination of bidding and procurement packages into one law that is also unreasonable. Many units bid at auction without boldly selecting goods with good value.

To remove this bottleneck, Mr. Hiep said that the revised Bidding Law giving investors the right to self-determination to choose some forms such as direct bidding, limited bidding, bid designation... is extremely necessary.