The administrative building of northern mountainous Lai Chau Province, which was built at a cost of $25 million.

Some are valued up to $100 million, and have been put into operation in Da Nang, Lam Dong, Binh Duong, and Ba Ria-Vung Tau.

Some others are planned to be built, including one in the northern port city of Hai Phong at the estimated cost of VND10 trillion (more than $446 million), Hai Duong with estimated investment of VND2,060 billion (nearly $100 million), Dong Nai with VND2.2 trillion ($100 million), Khanh Hoa with VND5.5 trillion (over $250 million), Binh Thuan, Binh Dinh, Nghe An and HCM City which are all worth dozens or hundreds of millions USD.

Most localities explain that such projects are necessary to better serve local people and manage State services more efficiently.

The public did not support these projects, saying that the huge capital for these projects should be used for building schools, hospitals or roads.

Duong Trung Quoc, a national assembly deputy, said the effectiveness of such administrative centers should be reconsidered. "As public debt grows, localities must be more careful in spending and put more effort into generating revenues," he said.

Bui Duc Thu, of the National Assembly's Finance and Budget Committee, said: "By the end of the year, Vietnam's public debt to GDP ratio might reach 61.3 percent and 63.2 percent by the end of 2016. Spending money on headquarters or statues is unsuitable right now."

National Assembly deputy Do Van Ve said there were more urgent public needs, and poor provinces should halt such plans.

At the National Assembly Question & Answer session on November 17, deputy Do Van Duong from HCM City questioned Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung about this issue.

"This is a very serious problem. I would like to ask the opinion of the Prime Minister on the construction of offices of state and government agencies in general and the building of expensive administrative centers of some provinces," he said.

Answering the question, Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai said that the majority of offices of provincial governments were built many years ago and they cover large areas, averaging 33 hectares/work.

Today these offices are "unsuitable for urban, trade development of many provinces and cities," he said.

Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai emphasized, in the scheme of the overall administrative reform, the Government plans to build concentrated administrative centers to help citizens get easier access to public services.

According to Mr. Hai, the Government told provinces to build administrative centers that are suitable to their resources and urban development plan.

"However, recently some provinces submitted to the Government administrative center projects with huge investment resources,” he added.

The Prime Minister instructed to halt these projects for review and consideration by the Ministry of Construction, Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai said.