The meeting in HCM City was chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Le Minh Khai and Deputy Minister of Construction Nguyen Van Sinh, the representative of the Government Office, chair of HOREA and 19 presidents and CEOs of real estate firms in HCM City, Binh Duong and Ba Ria – Vung Tau. At the same time, a meeting was organized in Hanoi and chaired by Deputy Prime Ministr Le Van Thanh, Minister of Construction Nguyen Thanh Nghi, and 15 managers of real estate firms.

Real estate firms have asked the Prime Minister to set up a special task-force to help settle problems at businesses and projects.

According to the HCM City Real Estate Association (HOREA), legal problems account for 70 percent of difficulties of real estate projects. Some regulations are inconsistent. However, it will take time to solve the problem and the most radical solution is amending the 2013 Land Law and related laws.

While waiting for laws to be amended in the next 19 months, real estate firms have asked the government to urgently consider a decree amending and supplementing some articles of decrees within state management jurisdiction of the Ministry of Construction, and issue another decree amending and supplementing some articles of decrees guiding implementation of the Land Law. This will help remove some obstacles in housing projects promptly.

According to real estate firms, complicated administrative procedures force them to spend time following procedures to obtain licenses for commercial housing projects (it takes 3-5 years on average). This reduces enterprises’ business opportunities and causes investment costs to increase. Some agencies are afraid of facing legal risks, so they dare not make decisions.

Real estate firms have asked MOC to join forces with ministries, branches and localities to build standard procedures on required formalities for urban and commercial housing development projects.

Regarding difficulties in capital mobilization, enterprises have asked the government and SBV to grant at least one more percent of credit growth limit so as to help them get an additional amount of VND100 trillion worth of capital.

Businesses have also proposed that individual investors who are not professional securities investors should be allowed to buy privately issued bonds at a certain proportion.

They say that it is necessary to set up a special task-force to remove difficulties for specific businesses and projects to create precedents for solving similar difficulties in other projects, thus restoring confidence in the market.

In addition, real estate project developers want to be allowed to transfer entire projects or part of projects once they get certificates or decisions to allocate land. 

This will allow them to reactivate projects that have been pending for a long time.

Duy Anh