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Local authorities vow to eliminate slow-paced projects, sternly
Unlike previous years, when local authorities only paid attention to the number of registered foreign direct investment (FDI) projects and the registered capital, they now focus on pushing up the disbursement of the licensed projects, and revoke the licenses of the slow paced projects.
Ba Ria-Vung Tau was always among the leading localities in terms of FDI attraction in the last few years. However, the provincial authorities have only set up a modest target for FDI in 2012. It strives to attract 500 million dollars worth of projects this year, just equal to 50 percent of the last year.
Deputy Chair of Ba Ria-Vung Tau Ho Van Nien said that the provincial authorities are striving to speed up the disbursement of the 27 billion dollars worth of capital registered for the 298 licensed projects, while it does not set up the goals about the number of projects.
The provincial authorities in 2011 revoked the investment licenses from 24 projects, which went slowly or had not been kicked off.
Nien said that officials are checking the licensed projects which have been going slowly. The local authorities will give support to help speed up the projects. Meanwhile, the investors, who cannot implement the registered projects, would see the licenses revoked.
Meanwhile, Long An provincial authorities have announced that they are going to apply drastic measures to the investors who have not implemented the projects on industrial zone and residential quarter in the province.
Director of the Long An provincial investment and planning department Nguyen Minh Ha said the local authorities would remove unfeasible projects in order to give opportunities to capable investors.
Twenty two projects which were planned to cover an area of 1600 hectares have seen the licenses revoked in the last year.
The Lam Dong provincial authorities have also stated that they will sternly eliminate the projects whose investors have not implemented. In 2011, the decisions to revoke licenses from 45 projects were made. Meanwhile, the local authorities are considering revoking licenses of another 40 projects.
The majority of the removed projects are the ones on small and medium scale hydropower plants, tourism and agriculture- forestry.
In HCM City, though the Vietnamese partner in the joint venture on developing the Thu Thiem software park project in district 2 has been trying to retain the investment license, the city’s authorities have still decided to revoke the license of the multi-billion dollar project to give opportunities to others.
Other provinces including Binh Thuan, Da Nang and Bac Ninh have also stated that they are applying drastic measures to eliminate unfeasible projects.
The Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) and local authorities have made such decisions after experts gave warnings about the tardiness in the implementation of a lot of projects. In fact, local authorities only made the decision to revoke licenses if they have no other choices. Especially, in some cases, investors have injected several million dollars in the projects, and it took much time to follow the necessary procedures to revoke licenses.
Phan Huu Thang, former Director of the Foreign Investment Agency, now Director of the FDI Research Center under the Hanoi National University, the biggest challenge for Vietnam in attracting FDI is the big volume of undisbursed capital, worth 108 billion dollars.
Thang said that though this is the big challenge, if Vietnam has reasonable measures to speed up the disbursement of the capital, this would be a good opportunity to promote foreign investment.
vietnamnet
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