The year-to-date disbursement rate of public investment funds for development remains low at 49.1% of the target set by the government, making it difficult to meet the disbursement target by year-end, according to the Finance-Budget Committee under the National Assembly.
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According to the committee, these issues have been known for many years, but there has been lack of efforts from government agencies to resolve them, and which require all concerned parties to strictly follow regulations and laws on finance – budget, including the Law on Public Investment.
Chairman of the committee Nguyen Duc Hai mentioned the slow allocation of public funds has not been properly addressed, in which the main issue is the complicated procedures.
This has caused negative impacts on the construction progress for many projects of huge impacts to Vietnam’s socio-economic development, Hai stressed.
The government expected expenditure for development in 2020 to increase by VND41.3 trillion (US$1.77 billion) or 9.6% higher than the estimate in 2019 and account for 26.9% of total state expenditure.
However, Hai expressed concern the the 9.6%-increase is quite low compared to the huge capital needed to complete on-going public investment projects in the 2016 – 2020 period.
In the first nine months of 2019, Vietnam disbursed VND192.13 trillion (US$), or 45.17% of the target set by the National Assembly and 49.14% of the target set by Prime Minister, these rates are lower than those recorded in the same period last year.
Statistics showed that seven government agencies and 14 provinces have disbursement rate of over 70%, in which four agencies and four provinces have disbursed over 80%.
However, the majority has the disbursement rate lower than the average, including 31 agencies and 19 provinces with rates lower than 50%, 17 agencies and one province with disbursement rate below 30%.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc previously said slow disbursement of public investment are bottlenecks for the development of Vietnam’s economy and warned major consequences out of the issue if not properly addressed.
In 2019, state budget deficit is estimated at 3.4% of the GDP, public debt at 56.1%, government debt at 49.2% and foreign debt at 45.8%, which are all lower than the estimates, Hai informed.
