Many irregularities in printing textbooks
The Ministry of Public Security's Investigation Police Agency has just issued a conclusion, proposing to prosecute defendant Nguyen Duc Thai - former Chairman and former Director of the Vietnam Education Publishing House (Education Publishing House) - for the crime of "Receiving bribes" and many other defendants for the crime of "Giving bribes" in the case that occurred at the Education Publishing House and related units.
According to the investigation conclusion, during the period of 2018-2021, Mr. Thai directed his employees to commit many violations, thereby creating conditions for Phung Vinh Hung Company to participate in and win 13 bid packages with a total value of VND 2,101 billion; Minh Cuong Phat Paper Company Limited was allowed to participate in and win 5 bid packages with a total value of VND 209 billion.
Based on the valuation results of the Valuation Council in the criminal proceedings of Hanoi City, based on the actual volume of goods delivered and received, the Investigation Agency determined the total damage of the case to be 10 billion VND.
By facilitating the two companies to win the bid, Mr. Thai received bribes of nearly 25 billion VND from the leaders of the two companies.
According to Lao Dong's research, in September 2022, the Government Inspectorate issued Inspection Conclusion No. 955/KL-TTCP on thematic inspection of State management of education and training.
The inspection conclusion clearly stated that in the period 2014-2019, Phung Vinh Hung Company was selected to supply 83.1% of the number of papers of the Education Publishing House (equivalent to more than 1,890 billion VND).
When checking the probability of some of this company's printing paper supply contracts to the Publishing House (1/3 of the total amount of printing paper supplied, equivalent to more than 528 billion VND), the Government Inspectorate discovered that the price of printing paper that the company sold to the Higher Education Publishing House was on average about 1.7 times higher than the price of paper that the company directly imported (equivalent to a difference of more than 210 billion VND).
"The above contents show that the selection of contractors to supply printing paper for textbook production by the Publishing House through competitive bidding has many irregularities, not ensuring fairness, transparency and economic efficiency" - Government Inspectorate pointed out.
Parents "bending their backs" because of unreasonably high book prices
Notably, the Government Inspectorate also pointed out many other problems in determining the ceiling price of textbook printing packages by bidding.
In particular, the Education Publishing House sells 3 types of printing paper with an input VAT rate of 5% to the winning bidders for printing textbooks. However, when building the ceiling price of the printing package, the Publishing House calculates it together with the tax rate of textbook printing services with a VAT rate of 10%.
This caused the bid price to increase by 5% VAT for 3 types of paper, causing students' families to have to buy textbooks at a higher price than the registered price, amounting to more than 14.8 billion VND.
Along with the allocation of interest costs into the cost of textbooks, the results of the inspection and verification showed that, in the period of 2014-2018, the process of building the price of the textbook printing package and the accounting of the Education Publishing House had errors, leading to students' families having to buy textbooks at a higher price than the correct registered price, with an amount of more than 85 billion VND.
The Government Inspectorate determined that the selection of contractors to supply printing paper, printing, distributing and trading textbooks had shortcomings and violations, leading to unreasonably high prices for textbooks registered by the Education Publishing House.
