(Photo: tapchitaichinh.vn)

Localities are determined to disburse public investment capital to drive economic growth and recovery.  

Quang Ninh province has called for disbursing all allocated public investment capital this year to increase the total social investment capital 10% from last year and obtain a double-digit growth rate set for this year’s GRDP.

Cao Tuong Huy, Deputy Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, said Quang Ninh is determined to implement key public investment projects and has created conditions to enable them to be completed on schedule.  

“We’ve taken drastic steps to accelerate capital disbursement and hope to complete disbursement by the end of December. We’ve launched a 100-day emulation campaign to speed up three key projects - Cua Luc 1 Bridge, the coastal road linking Ha Long and Cam Pha, and the Van Don  -  Mong Cai Expressway – worth nearly 750 million USD,” said Huy.

He added, “In addition to improving administrative procedures and the business environment, the province has accelerated land clearance and compensation as a way to support investors,”.

Public investment has always been identified as one of the most important drivers of economic growth.

Over the past 5 years, 88 billion USD was spent on medium-term public investment plans, to help mobilize another 392 billion USD in social investment capital.

This was crucial with the national economy seriously affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pham The Anh, Head of the Macroeconomics Department of the National Economics University, said, “Total social investment capital in the first half of this year grew 7% with that of the state investment sector increasing 7.3%, the non-state sector 7.4%, and the foreign investment sector about 6.8%.”

The Anh said, “It means there was no change. Our policy recommendation is to accelerate the implementation of national infrastructure projects to create long-term growth for Vietnam after the epidemic. It’s also necessary to speed up large-scale infrastructure projects.”

Due to the fourth wave of the pandemic, the disbursement of public investment capital has reached only about 47% of the set plan.

Deputy Finance Minister Tran Xuan Ha said that in the "new normal", ministries, sectors and localities need to take drastic steps to push disbursement.

“The slow progress of public investment disbursement is mainly due to project management boards and governing bodies. It’s necessary to define the volume of work, payment procedures, and the responsibilities of investors and project management boards in regards to compensation for site clearance and bidding to speed up projects," according to Ha.

Localities nationwide have focused on removing bottle-necks in investment procedures to speed up investment disbursement while ministries, sectors and localities are reviewing projects that fail to reach a disbursement rate of 60% of plan to funds to projects with better disbursement progress.