Hanoi (VNA) – The alarminglysluggish disbursement of official development assistance (ODA) capital andforeign soft loans continued to be the topic of a teleconference in Hanoi onSeptember 13.

The event gathered representatives of the fiveministries with the biggest ODA and foreign soft loan allocation plans, namelythe ministries of transport, agriculture and rural development, education andtraining, natural resources and environment, and health. It was also attendedby representatives of the administrations and management boards of projectsusing ODA and preferential loans in the 63 provincial-level localities.

Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung pointed out the“very slow” disbursement of public investment capital, ODA capital and foreignsoft loans in recent years.

From 2016 to 2018, the investment capitaldisbursed from ODA and foreign soft loans was 137.176 trillion VND (about 5.9billion USD), equivalent to 74.53 percent of the plan assigned by the NationalAssembly. The rate in the first half of this year was only 3.4 percent of thetarget for 2019.

The public investment capital allocated from thestate budget was some 161.286 trillion VND between January and August,equivalent to 37.92 percent of the target set by the National Assembly.

During the same period, only 6.48 trillion VNDof ODA and foreign soft loans was disbursed, equivalent to just 10.7 percent ofthe allocation plan.

As many as 35 ministries, sectors andprovincial-level localities didn’t have any of their foreign capital disbursedin the eight months. Meanwhile, those with worryingly low disbursement ratesinclude the Ministry of Education and Training (5.8 percent), the Ministry of Health(4.8 percent), Quang Ninh province (0.5 percent), Quang Nam province (2.3percent), and Hung Yen province (8.3 percent), according to the FinanceMinistry.

Minister Dung blamed the snail’s pace of thedisbursement on several problems, including the lagged issuance of medium-termpublic investment plans for ministries and localities, capital allocation yetto match the reality, prolonged procedures, projects’ low readiness, andhindrances to site clearance and corresponding capital preparation.

At the meeting, the Finance Ministry proposedthe Government assign the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) to promptlywork with relevant ministries and sectors to build a new decree on themanagement of ODA and preferential loans to replace those issued in 2016 and2018. It said that the new decree should appoint the public debt management toa single agency and focus on the simplification of related procedures.

It also asked the MPI to coordinate with therelevant sides to review the implementation of the medium-term publicinvestment plan for 2016-2020 so as to adjust and allocate capital for theprojects in need of funding in a timely manner to ensure that the plan isfulfilled./.