Slow disbursement of investment capital: Problems do not come from the State Treasury

	Deputy PM requests stepping up public capital disbursement
	Public investment disbursement low in four months
	Deputy PM asks for quickening public investment disbursement

The press conference. Photo: T.L

Promote the modernization of expenditure control

Speaking at the press conference, Deputy General Director of the State Treasury Nguyen QuangVinh said, the State Treasury has always been interested in administrative reform and modernization, in which modernization of expenditure control is always the top priority. The promotion of modernization of expenditure control involves more than 120,000 units, administrative and non-business units across the country.

Evaluating the administrative reforms in expenditure control, the Deputy General Director of the State Treasury stated that through the reform process, the expenditure control of the State Treasury has made significant changes which are summarized as "6 reductions, 8 automations and4 improvements.”

In detail the 6 "reductions" are: documents; papers; procedures; steps; payment control time; direct contact with customers. “Automation” in 8 stages of: receiving applications; control; accountant; payment; return of results; recordkeeping; report and compare. 4 "improvements" are: more transparent publicity; closer; more secure (only one time for data entry, no falsification of records); more effective.

According to Director of the Department of Expenditure Control of the State Treasury, Tran Manh Ha, to control regular expenditures of the state budget, the State Treasury has developed and submitted to competent authorities to complete the mechanism and process of controlling state spending through the State Treasury in the direction of simplicity, clarity, transparency in control documents, documents and contents, associated with clearly defining the responsibilities and powers of financial agencies, management units, State Treasury and units using state budget funds.

The State Treasury has controlled expenditure in accordance with the spending limit for small expenses of 20 million vnd or less (control under the List of vouchers) in order to control expenses by value, by risk, by allocated expenditure for state administrative agencies and public non-business units in accordance with the current legal documents.

The State Treasury has implemented online public services on the e-portal of the State Treasury since February 2018, contributing to the modernization of expenditure control.

For expenditure control in investment, payment control procedures have been reformed at the State Treasury to reduce the number of documents sent by investors and project management units. Moreover, the time for controlling and paying investment capital has reduced from 7 days to only 3 working days.

Deputy director Nguyen QuangVinh speaks at the press conferences

Obstacles in Law

According to State Treasurystatistics, by May 15, 2019, the State Treasury has controlled over VND 289 trillion of regular spending (27.8% of the state budgetestimated). In particular, by May 15, 2019, in investment expenditure, the accumulated disbursed investment capital under the 2019 plan was more than VND 72 trillion (reaching 20.3% of the plan for 2019).

Explaining the low disbursement in the first months of 2019, according to Nguyen QuangVinh, the State Treasury did not encounter any difficulties because the current spending control process from the State Treasury was very clear.

"In the first months of the year, disbursement was low due todifferent reasons. Regarding the mechanism, the disbursement mechanism is inadequateand needs to be amended from the Investment Law, Construction Law... Regarding the process, the allocation of capital is still slow due to the investors and contractors. There are also problems due toland clearance under theLand Law. It is these things that contributed to low disbursement of public investment in the first months of the year”, said Nguyen QuangVinh.

The representative of the Department of Expenditure Control said that, in order to speed up the disbursement progress in 2019, the State Treasury directed its units to regularly coordinate closely and instructed themin completing documents, advance payment procedures, ensuring all eligible documents for payment of investment sent to the State Treasury by investors and project management unitsare completed in accordance withregulations and on time. At the same time, in order to urge investors, the Project Management Boards will speed up the implementation, check,take over, andcomplete the documents and procedures to send to the State Treasury to control payment, recover capital which has been advanced, and avoid accruement in the last months of the year which could cause difficulties in the expenditure control and disbursement.

The State Treasury has also controlled payment on the principle of "pay before control" for each payment and "control before pay" for the last payment of the contract, facilitating investors in disbursing capital construction investment.