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Where will 5 trillion dong from state budget go?
The decision to allocate huge sums of money worth trillions dong to five state owned economic groups and general corporations has surprised the public, especially when state owned enterprises have been criticized for using the state’s capital ineffectively.
What are the criteria for money allocation?
It seems that people have no sympathy for state owned economic groups and general corporations. In the eyes of people, the enterprises are the big debtors (They had incurred the loss of 26 trillion dong as declared by the State Audit in July 2010). Especially, the Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group (Vinashin) has bogged down with the huge debt of 86 trillion dong.
Therefore, the decision to allocate 5180 billion dong to five economic groups and general corporations, the Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam), the Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), the Vietnam Railway Corporation (VRC), the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group (VNPT) and Vietnam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines), has stirred up controversies among the public. People still do not understand why such a huge sum of money should be given to the “big guys” of the national economy. The reason that the money is needed for the projects of public interests seems unpersuasive.
Of the five economic groups, PetroVietnam is considered the most financially powerful group, while VNPT also has very high turnover and profit.
Meanwhile, EVN, as Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Hoang Quoc Vuong said, is likely to make loss in 2010 for the first time.
Nevertheless, EVN will only get 215 billion dong for developing the power network in remote areas, while PetroVietnam will get 3500 billion dong, or 67 percent of the total money allocated to the five groups in 2011. Meanwhile, the list of the projects which will use the allocated capital has not been made public by PetroVietnam.
In principle, the capital should be allocated to key and urgent infrastructure projects which need to be completed in 2011.
Therefore, a question has been raised twhether the projects in the oil and gas sector are as urgent and important as the bridge and road projects.
When talking with VietNamNet’s Vietnam Economic Forum (VEF), Pham Chi Lan, a well known economist said: “I myself was surprised when the National Assembly approved the spending proposals?, especially the capital allocation to PetroVietnam”.
According to Lan, PetroVietnam’s operation aims more to commercial purpose than the welfare of the public. “If the capital sums were not allocated to PetroVietnam, but reserved to develop agriculture and rural development, more people would benefit from the investment capital,” Lan said.
Regarding the sum of 60 billion dong allocated to VNPT, Lan said that, the group ccould use its profit instead of using the state budget.
Supervision and examination needed
“The National Assembly has approved the budget for the five economic groups. Therefore, the only thing to do now is to strictly supervise the investments funded by the state budget. “The supervision needs to be kicked off right after the disbursement,” Lan said, adding that if the examination is only carried out after the misspending occurs, no one will be able to take back the money.
Several days ago, the Central Institute for Economic Management released the result of its survey on supervising state owned enterprises and state owned economic groups.
There are no clear regulations that force 100 percent state owned enterprises to expose the information. Therefore, a lot of state owned enterprises have blamed those in charge of implementing the public projects for their losses.
Pham Huyen
vietnamnet
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