Drastic effort must be taken to speed up public investment disbursement. — File Photo

HÀ NỘI — The Ministry of Finance has urged drastic efforts to speed up the disbursement of public investment sourced from foreign borrowings in the remaining months of this year.

The disbursement of foreign–sourced public investment remained slow in the first half of this year, the ministry said, citing statistics that only around VNĐ3.2 trillion was disbursed in the period, equivalent to 27.2 per cent of the planned amount.

To date, only 5 out of 11 ministries and agencies which were allocated with foreign-sourced public investment managed to disburse some of the capital, including the Việt Nam Academy of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Ministry of Education and Training.

Trương Hùng Long, Director of the Department of Debt Management and External Finance, said at the ministry's meeting about speeding up foreign-sourced public investment yesterday that although the disbursement result was better than in 2021 and 2022, the rate remained disappointing.

There were a number of causes for the slow disbursement of public investment sourced from foreign borrowings, including slow site clearance, incompletion of design consultancy contracts, and disagreements between investors and contractors about pricing and volume.

In addition, the slow adjustment of investment policies and loan agreements also caused delays in signing contracts, Long pointed out. Another problem was the slow response of donors about bidding documents and related documents, which fell under the responsibility of the project management boards, the project management agencies and the donors, he said.

Being one among three key players in public investment disbursement, the Ministry of Transport said that the ministry disbursed a sum worth more than VNĐ2 trillion of foreign–sourced public investment in the first half of this year, or 40.7 per cent of the plan, to 14 out of 19 foreign–funded projects.

During the implementation, the ministry encountered problems related to site clearance, land purpose conversion and slow response times from donors.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, which disbursed around VNĐ576 billion in public investment sourced from foreign borrowing as of June 30, or 32 per cent, said that the disbursement faced a problem of rising prices of raw materials which affected construction cost estimations.

The ministry said that coordination between central and local agencies must be enhanced to speed up the evaluation and implementation of projects.

Drastic efforts are required from the Government, ministries, agencies and localities to achieve the goal of public investment disbursement this year, the Ministry of Finance said.

Long said that the Ministry of Finance would keep a close watch to solve problems that were hindering the disbursement of public investment.

He added that the application of information technology should be increased in the disbursement of foreign–sourced public investment to speed up the process and ensure efficiency.

Public investment should be focused on projects with good progress and that are in priority fields. Projects with prolonged problems which remained unsolved should have funds transferred to other projects with higher readiness. — VNS