According to Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung, the amendment aims to ensure clarity of people, work, responsibilities, and results; to cut down and simplify administrative procedures, to prevent responsibilities from being passed around, and to avoid creating a "request - grant" mechanism.
The draft law allows the separation of compensation, support, resettlement, and site clearance into independent projects for all project groups (including group B and C projects).
The Prime Minister's authority is stipulated to assign a provincial People's Committee as the competent authority to implement projects in the area of 2 or more provincial administrative units.
The Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee is selected to assign a District People's Committee as the competent authority to implement the project in the area of 2 or more district-level administrative units or to organize project implementation according to his/her authority.
Decentralize the authority to adjust the medium-term public investment plan of central budget capital among ministries, central and local agencies from the National Assembly Standing Committee to the Prime Minister.
Decentralize the authority to decide on the use of the central budget capital reserve and unallocated central budget capital in the medium-term public investment plan from the National Assembly to the National Assembly Standing Committee.
Increase the scale of public investment capital of important national projects from 30,000 billion VND or more; of group A, group B and group C projects with a scale twice that of current regulations.
Decentralize authority to the heads of ministries and central agencies to decide on investment policies for group A projects managed by their agencies and organizations with capital scale of less than 10,000 billion VND; group A projects from 10,000 billion VND to 30,000 billion VND are under the authority of the Prime Minister.
Decentralize authority to People's Committees at all levels to decide on investment policies for group B and group C projects under their management.
Examining the draft law, Chairman of the National Assembly's Finance and Budget Committee Le Quang Manh said that it is recommended to strictly regulate the articles and clauses to ensure compensation and resettlement work is associated with investment in completing the project, avoiding waste.
At the same time, the total time for arranging capital to implement two independent component projects to complete the programs and projects must not exceed the regulations on project implementation time.
Regarding increasing the scale of public investment capital, the majority of opinions in the Finance - Budget Committee believe that, up to now, economic and social conditions and management capacity have changed a lot, so adjusting the criteria for project classification (essentially promoting decentralization) is necessary.
However, the adjustment needs to be calculated at a uniform rate between project types.
The Finance and Budget Committee believes that decentralizing the decision on investment policies for groups B and C managed by localities to People's Committees at all levels is a major change.
Deciding on investment policies for projects is an important local issue, so the current Law on Public Investment assigns the People's Council to decide on investment policies for projects and the People's Committee at the same level to decide on investment projects as a measure to control power and limit abuse of power.
“Therefore, the majority of opinions suggest that for group A projects, the provincial People's Council decides on the investment policy, and decentralizes the People's Committees at all levels to decide on investment in group B and C projects.
For the district level, it is necessary to assign the district People's Council to decide on investment policies for group B projects, and decentralize the district People's Committee to decide on investment policies for group C projects," said Mr. Le Quang Manh.
