Faced with this situation, the province is implementing many drastic solutions to disburse all the remaining capital to put public projects into operation soon and promote the local socio-economic development.
In 2024, a large capital was arranged for key projects of the province, including transport infrastructure works such as Belt Road No.5 connecting the province with Bac Giang Province; the road linking Thai Nguyen, Bac Giang, and Vinh Phuc; the provincial stadium; and the headquarters of provincial agencies. However, the disbursement rate in the first six months of the year was low, reaching only 10% to 20% of the total capital allocated for the year.
Projects invested by localities in the province also saw low disbursement rate, such as the Song Cong-Nui Coc tourist route in Song Cong City with a total investment of 320 billion VND (12.63 million USD) and the residential areas and functional areas on both sides of the tourist route with a total investment of 360 billion VND (14.2 million USD).
Ha Van Duong, Director of the Thai Nguyen Department of Planning and Investment, pointed out some reasons for low disbursement of public investment, including bottlenecks in land clearance, forest conversion, environmental impact assessment, and relocation of electricity and telecommunications works, as well as delays in the promulgation of documents guiding the implementation of the amended Bidding Law. In addition, there has been a lot of rain since the beginning of the year, which has greatly affected construction progress.
Despite many difficulties, Thai Nguyen Province is determined to conduct drastic and effective solutions to get a disbursement rate of 90% by the end of 2024 and 100% by January 2025. The province will replace managers of projects if they fail to ensure the required progress and do not solve related problems in a timely manner.
The Provincial People’s Committee replaced the Director of the Provincial Transport Construction Project Management Board and disciplined a number of related officials for not completing their tasks.
According to Duong Phuong Hoa, Deputy Director of Thai Nguyen Department of Planning and Investment, the department was assigned the task of regularly inspecting and reviewing each project and timely report to the Provincial People’s Committee to remove specific difficulties. Capital will be converted from projects with poor disbursement rate to projects with good disbursement, while land clearance and land use conversion will be accelerated for smooth implementation of projects.
The Transport Construction Project Management Board of Thai Nguyen Province has devised many solutions to speed up project progress and promote capital disbursement in the near future.
Bui Tien Chinh, Director of the Management Board, said: “We have worked with contractors and localities and determined that many large transportation projects are behind schedule, mainly due to rainy weather (a total of over 100 days of rain in recent months), slow land clearance, bottlenecks in the relocation of technical infrastructure works, especially the electricity system, and a lack of human resources and equipment. We will strengthen inspection to resolve these issues in the near future.”
The People’s Committee of Song Cong City and other localities in the province have also organised groups of officials to examine construction progress and disbursement of public investment. They also requested contractors and consultants to sign commitments on quality assurance, project progress, and disbursement progress at each specific milestone such that the disbursement rate will reach 60% by the end of the third quarter of this year, 90% by the end of the fourth quarter, and 100% by the end of January 2025, according to regulations of fiscal year 2024.
