Continuing the 9th Session, on the afternoon of May 16, the National Assembly listened to the Minister of Finance, authorized by the Prime Minister, present the State Budget settlement report for 2023.
Immediately afterwards, State Auditor General Ngo Van Tuan presented the State Audit Audit Report for 2023.
The management of land rent and land use fees still has many limitations
Reporting to the National Assembly on the collection of state budget revenue in 2023, State Auditor General Ngo Van Tuan said that the settlement in 2023 is more than VND 1,770,000 billion, equal to 109.3% of the assigned estimate, equal to 97.3% in 2022.
According to Mr. Tuan, through the audit of state budget collection management, the State Audit has found some shortcomings and limitations, such as:
The management of land rent and land use fees still have the situation of land use units, but there is no decision to lease land or land lease contracts; has not adjusted or slowly adjusted the land rent unit price when the period expired; Determine the land rent, exemption from land rent is not the right subjects.
In addition, there are still errors in mineral resource management in declaring output to calculate resource tax; environmental protection fee declaration and mineral exploitation right granting fee are not complete...
The State Audit Office also stated that the Customs authority also has cases of declaring a reduction in value-added tax - VAT (2%) for some items that are not in accordance with regulations and cases of applying goods codes that are not uniform.
At the same time, there are no regulations on customs authorities having to offset tax debts of tax authorities when refunding taxes to taxpayers, leading to many cases where customs authorities refund taxes to taxpayers but taxpayers still have tax debts at tax authorities.
Regarding state budget expenditure, the State Audit Office said that the settlement amount is nearly VND1,937,000 billion, equal to 93.3% of the estimate (down more than VND139,000 billion). The audit shows that the management of state budget expenditures is still limited.
The State Audit General pointed out that, first, regarding development investment expenditure, there are 38 ministries, central agencies and 25 localities with disbursement rates below the national average, of which some ministries and central agencies have low domestic capital disbursement rates (under 30%);
The disbursement rate of foreign capital only reached 53.9% of the plan. In addition, data on basic construction outstanding loans are not accurate; there is also a situation of extending capital plans that are not in accordance with regulations in some audited localities.
Second, for regular expenditures, the Ministry of Finance allocated nearly VND 58,000 billion to the central budget estimate (NSTW) to support localities in implementing new regimes and policies and implementing other tasks of the NSTW, which was not close to reality, leading to the cancellation of nearly VND 38,000 billion, accounting for 65.5% of the estimate...
Third, regarding source transfer spending, the total source transfer expenditure is more than VND 1,200,000 billion, equal to 39% of total state budget expenditure, although the ratio of source transfer spending on total state budget expenditure has decreased by 0.6% compared to 2022, it has still increased to the absolute number.
Through the audit, 19/56 localities transferred more than VND 3,400 billion from wrong sources, 8/56 localities transferred more than VND 343 billion from short sources.
In addition, audit results in localities show that some localities have not allocated enough or determined a salary reform source that is not in accordance with regulations of more than VND 3,500 billion;
Monitoring and managing unsuitable salary reform sources of more than VND 3,700 billion; 18 localities using salary reform sources that are not in accordance with regulations are nearly VND 1,400 billion.
Proposal to review and clarify the responsibilities of relevant units
From the limitations and shortcomings that have been clearly pointed out in the report submitted to the National Assembly, the State Audit Office recommends that the Government and the Prime Minister direct relevant units to review and clarify responsibilities to handle according to regulations for 3 projects that have signed agreements for many years but have not been disbursed, and have arisen large commitment fees;
Organizations and individuals do not adjust state budget settlement, according to the provisions of the State budget Law and Resolution No. 91/2023/QH15 of the National Assembly; do incorrect capital cancellation procedures, leading to the capital not being negotiated for reuse.
The SAV also proposed that the Government and the Prime Minister directed the Ministry of Finance to make recommendations of the SAV in the Audit Report of the State Budget settlement in 2023, in which the review for handling according to the provisions of the 2023 reserves reserve expired, the amount of more than VND 1,135 billion ...
Concluding the audit report, the State Audit Office agreed to submit to the National Assembly for approval the 2023 state budget settlement data, including: Total balanced state budget revenue of VND 3,023,547 billion; total balanced state budget expenditure of VND 3,176,154 billion; outstanding state budget expenditure of VND 291,564 billion, equal to 2.83% of implemented GDP.
