At a meeting reviewing 20 years of building and developing industrial parks, export processing zones and economic zones in Vietnam held recently in Hanoi, Planning and Investment Minister Bui Quang Vinh said to the press: If planning continues to be separately made, infrastructure will be certainly not synchronous. Nguyen Thanh reports.
It is obvious that infrastructure investment in Vietnam is not uniform. What do you think about this?
The 4th Central Party Congress discussed the synchronisation of modern infrastructure system. At present, road builders only build roads, railway builders only care about railways, airways developers only care about airways. Consultancy is limited to separate projects. This leads to the lack of interconnectivity of infrastructure items. Airports, seaports, roads linking to ports, highways and waterways are not interconnected.
It is said that planning is changeable because persons in charge only care about work during their terms. What is your opinion about this?
Our changeable planning is frankly resulted from our poor experience, qualification and vision. Take French planning in Sa Pa for example, I saw a lot of differences from Vietnam and learnt a lot from them. Their planning sketches out major frameworks, not too specific. Reading their planning, we can figure out what we will do next. Their planning is usable for centuries. Meanwhile, our planning is normally adjusted in five years or so. Vietnam seriously needs to study planning processes from other countries instead of doing what we are now doing.
Indeed, some people want to leave a personal impact during their time in power. However, they still have to follow 10-20 year planning timeframe. They need some terms in row to complete such planning.
In order to increase GDP, local leaders usually try to attract new investment projects. They do not care much about the connectivity or efficiency of projects. How do you assess this?
That is the biggest problem. In the upcoming time, we need overall national level planning, not locality and industry-separated ones. Our localities have small areas and small scales. If we allow localities to develop economy independently, they will not be able to bring their own advantages and competitiveness to full play at the national scale. We need to carry out national planning to define what localities do farming, what localities develop industry and how they connect together. Central authorities will work out general economic development plans while localities will carry out them.
What agency should be qualified for the task of reviewing planning? And, if the Ministry of Planning and Investment is assigned the task, will it be able to carry out this task?
Currently, the Government has assigned the Ministry of Planning and Investment to lead a team to draft the Law on Planning. The ministry is taking the first steps for this task. As regards a planning evaluating agency, the ministry is also an independent unit capable of reviewing planning. In the draft law, the Ministry of Planning and Investment will serve as a general organiser of planning to avoid duplication, overlapping and waste. The ministry is advising the Government to plan and allocate resources; thus, it is completely able to take on the overall planning.
For better infrastructure development, our policies need to be strong enough. When will Vietnam have such policies?
The Ministry of Planning and Investment has advised the Prime Minister to issue Directive 1792/CT-TTg to guide localities to avoid unfocused investment in 2012. Previously, many localities approved investment projects before seeking capital. The problem was they did not know how much money they needed.
From now on, there should be a regulation that localities must have enough capital before ratifying projects. Based on the centrally funded capital, localities will be permitted to approve their projects if they mobilise the remaining capital needed. Otherwise, they will not be allowed to ratify them. If authorities pass projects without enough capital, they will be personally answerable to the law. In case of using State funded capital, provinces and cities must ask the Prime Minister for the capital before carrying out projects.
I believe that new policies will put an end to incomplete and unfocused investments. To date, the number of projects to be carried out in 2012 has declined markedly.
Another important aspect to be changed is the capital allocation mechanism. Capital allocation will be on a medium-term basis (five years) instead of annualised basis. That means the Government will announce the amount of capital for localities over the next five years with clear principles and general planning.
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