In the afternoon of May 17, the National Assembly discussed in the Group on the State Budget Law project (amended), the Law on Amending and Supplementing a number of articles of the Bidding Law, the Law on Investment by the method of public -private partnership ...
At the discussion session, General Secretary To Lam made startling comments about the current situation of bidding.
"The contract is very large, large machines and equipment are built, but when the road is built, we can't see it anywhere, and we have sold it to F9 and F10. At that time, workers had to carry each stone and gravel truck to build a road, sit and hit the stone but could not find any machinery. When I asked, I said it was F10," said the General Secretary.
Selling to F10 is a persistent situation in bidding work - a key link of public investment and also a bottleneck for many projects with slow progress and poor quality.
In particular, the General Secretary also frankly "closed the bidding process": the crime of slowing down development, the crime of causing poor quality projects, the crime of losing staff and in the end not saving anything for the budget.
In fact, in recent years, the bidding process on paper has been complete and methodical, but the implementation has been complicated.
The winning contractors may be famous enterprises with very good documents, but then the project is sold through many subcontracting layers, causing the quality of the project to not be guaranteed, the cost to increase, the progress is prolonged, and the responsibility is scattered.
Bidding should have been a tool to select contractors with sufficient capacity and reputation, who are truly responsible for the work, and construct on schedule and with the right quality as committed.
When the winning bidder only plays the role of "intermediary window", while the actual construction units are the weaker units, it is no longer a competitive bidding, but a division.
The core reason is that we are lacking after-sales responsibility. The contractor selection process can be carefully inspected, but construction supervision, quality acceptance, and comparison of actual equipment are lax.
And this loophole is the living ground for bidding, selling, and draining the budget, causing both material and social losses.
Therefore, as the General Secretary emphasized, the amendment of the Bidding Law this time must go straight to practical shortcomings. Not only does it shorten the time to select contractors to keep up with the disbursement progress, but it also re-establishes the entire value chain from selecting, implementing, supervising, and handling violations.
Fraudulent contractors must be eliminated from the market. project delays must have a clear mechanism for handling responsibilities. And all information related to bidding needs to be public and transparent.
Bidding reform is not only a matter of legal techniques, but a practical step to regain the effectiveness of state capital, rebuilding people's trust in public works.
When bidding is carried out correctly and strictly, we not only have quality projects, ensuring progress, but also opening a more transparent and sustainable development path for the country.
