The government’s report on public investment showed that VND253.148 trillion was disbursed as of September 30, or 46.7 percent of the plan assigned by the Prime Minister, 16 percent less than the same period of 2021.

The government said this reflected specific investment capital, that is, payments only accelerated after a certain workload was completed.

According to the government, the task of disbursing public capital in 2022 has been difficult with the amount of capital VND118 trillion higher than in 2021. 

2022 is the second year of the medium-term investment plan, but it is the first year of the plan implementation (this is because the 2021-2025 medium-term investment capital was just assigned by the National Assembly in July 2021).

Many provinces have not allocated all the capital approved by the National Assembly. This is attributed to inadequate planning, especially spending from collections from land, lotteries and local over- expenditures. 

The government said that the slow disbursement of public capital, especially in the early months of the year, has occurred for years and no considerable improvement has been made, especially in ODA (official development assistance)-funded projects. 

The disbursement of public investment in January-September was below expectation, especially for foreign capital. This is big challenge because according to the 2019 Law on Public Investment, the time for annual disbursement is one year.

By the end of September, 39 out of 51 ministries, central agencies and 22 out of 63 cities/provinces got disbursement rate lower than the average (46.7 percent). Of these, 14 ministries, central agencies and one locality had the disbursement below 20 percent of the plans assigned by the Prime Minister.

Luong Bang