Conference discusses measures to accelerate public investment disbursement

The Ministry of Finance held an online conference on October 7 with localities on the implementation of urgent tasks towards accelerating the disbursement of official development assistance (ODA) and concessional loans in the last three months of 2021.

At the conference
At the conference

In 2021, the total plan of public investment capital from ODA and foreign concessional loans assigned to localities is over VND63.7 trillion (over US$2,79 billion), of which the additional capital targeted by the State budget is over VND34.9 trillion and capital allocated for localities is nearly VND28.8 trillion.

In the first nine months, additional capital targeted by the State budget reached only 11.51% of the year’s estimate, while capital allocated for localities reached 7.78% of the estimate. According to the MoF, this is a very low disbursement rate and speed. Therefore, the disbursement of foreign public investment from foreign sources in 2021 is expected to reach only about 36.5% of the allocated capital plan.

By synthesising reports from localities and working directly with a number of localities, it can be seen that there are many problems and causes leading to the delays in disbursement.

Accordingly, the most prominent objective cause is due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as the import of machinery and equipment and the mobilisation of foreign experts, workers, contractors, supervision consultants, etc., have been prolonged. In addition, there was also a delay in completing the procedures for adjusting investment policies, plans and loan agreements.

There are four localities with good disbursement speed, even proposing to increase capital sources, including localities that are implementing social distancing due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Therefore, slow progress in disbursement due to subjectivity was assessed by the conference as the key cause.

The MoF and the Ministry of Planning and Investment will continue to submit to the Prime Minister solutions agreed with ministries, branches and localities to accelerate disbursement of public investment capital from foreign loans in the time to come.