In one side, the public investment contributes to the realisation of the goals and socio-economic tasks in different development stages and in other side, it directly makes key impacts on the good management of the state budget and other public resources. Therefore, the drafting and enacting of a separate law in this area is a correct and timely policy to improve the efficiency of the investments in public works.
The effectiveness of public investment is not high
To address the current issues limiting the effectiveness of investment in public works, the investment law is discussed and expected to be adopted at the seventh session of the National Assembly. Based on the results of public opinion surveys on the drafted State Budget Law in the provinces of Hoa Binh, Nam Dinh, Quang Tri and Ba Ria-Vung Tau, which are conducted by a group of development agencies including Action to the Community Development Centre (ACDC), Centre for Community Empowerment (CECEM), Centre for Education Promotion and Empowerment of Women (CEPEW ), Cooperation group for governance and public administration reform (GPAR) and Oxfam Vietnam, with the support of the Finance and Budget Committee of the 13th session of the National Assembly, there is much evidence to reflect the limited effectiveness of investment in public works. This illustrates many responses that there are a number of programmes and projects of public investment are not really close to the needs of the people at the grassroots level and some of them have the results which cannot be applicable in reality; the priority of the investment activities is incompatible with the aspirations of the people; the forms of pubic evaluating and monitoring of the projects, particularly one with 100 percent funding of the state budget, are still limited.
In fact, there is a lack of transparency of information between the projects fully invested by the state budget and the projects with involvement of the government and residents. For the public works with 100 percent investment from the state budget, especially the works invested and implemented at senior levels (district and province) ,the information related to specific plans, project design, cost estimate and cost summary are not publicised to residents. Meanwhile, the projects with involvement of both government and the residents, which the residents contribute their labour, capital, land, such the information as planning processes, actions plans, project content and evaluation are open to public.
On the other hand, the public lacks information about the person or agency responsible for explaining the investment processes of the public works at local areas. Public opinion surveys indicate that none of provinces publicize the information about the contact points, where people can go to find out more information, as well as the surveys that collect the responses of the residents to the public investment projects. The lack of information related to the person or agency in charge leads less effectiveness of the evaluation and monitoring of people with the public investment projects. People do not get feedback promptly and effectively when the public works are being implemented, exposing problems of relevance, quality and efficiency.
The public investment projects, particularly the projects with use of 100 percent of state budget have not encouraged an appropriate mechanism to obtain the effective participation of the people. The agencies and organisations representing the people like Community Monitoring Committees, Farther Land Front, and People's Councils have not promoted their roles effectively in the process of making decisions on the investment and monitoring the implementation of the public investment projects. The projects and programmes without the participation of the people lead to inefficiency and waste of the state budget while not meeting the needs and circumstances of local realities or even causing damage to people.
Recommendation
According to the reports from the public opinion, the draft of the law on public investment should be reviewed and improved to overcome the above limitation; besides, it is necessary to expand the scope content and forms to make the public investment project more transparent to ensure the participation of the people. Accordingly, the clause 5, article 12 in regard to the principle of the public investment management should be adjusted towards common rules to ensure openness and transparency of the public investment activities, including the medium and annual planning; Article 14 is amended to strictly regulate the public contents, forms of public transparency and accountability of the heads of agencies, organizations and units during the implementation. Specifically, this requires consistency in the publication and transparency of all activities of the public investment, accessibility to the content with high transparency based on the operational procedures rather than the final product or the official to promote the participation of people, and clearly defines the public forms to suit each content and specific targeted public groups.
Besides, the report also recommends additional tasks of “provisions of information, transparency in implementation and investing activities in accordance with the provisions of regulations of this law and of other relevant laws” of agencies, organisations and units who are involved in the operation of public investment activities in the draft; besides, the report suggests additional regulations on violations of the regime of transparency and provisions of law on the prohibited acts in public investment. The additions aim to create a legal basis for handling violations of the publicity and transparency, thereby enhancing the effective implementation of the legal framework.
In particular, according to the report, the draft law needs to regulate the accountability of government agencies, authorised bodies and other functional agencies, organisations and other entities in the public investment activities as well as the comprehensive regulations on the accountability of explanations in the draft law, including vertical and horizontal explanations. Vertical explanation is the accountability of explanation to the public about the public investment activities. Horizontal explanation is accountability of explanation of the public servants and functional agencies to the inspection agencies, auditors or senior agencies.
In addition, it is necessary to follow the principles that the people or community supervise the processes of building guidelines, planning investment activities and implementing the programmes, projects, implementing as well as complying with the investment plans. At the same time, the people and communities at the grassroots level have the right to monitor all programmes and projects of public investment if the programmes and projects directly impact or relate to the implementation rights and obligations of that community. On the other hand, it requires appropriate monitoring format in accordance with the content and responsibilities of the agencies and organisations that get involved in handling the monitoring results. VCCI News