Committee to disburse ODA, foreign loans after returning nearly VND4,100 billion

Scene of the conference.

Speaking at the Conference, Deputy Minister of Finance Tran Xuan Ha said that after two months of implementing strict and drastic instructions from all levels and sectors, the disbursement rate of foreign loans of ministries has progressed. It is anticipated the implementation in August to reach 21.64% of the estimate. This is the result of the Government, ministries, sectors and localities in implementing many drastic measures to promote disbursement of public investment capital.

However, this rate is still lower than the average level of development investment disbursement in 2020 of the whole country. This conference was aimed to listen directly the opinions of ministries and authorities for evaluating more specifically about the disbursement situation in the past eight months. From that point out the objective and subjective reasons to have a basis for reviewing, re-evaluate the disbursement capacity to the end of the year and offer solutions.

According to the report released at the Conference, at present, ministries and sectors are continuing to disburse public investment capital from foreign loans in accordance with the 2019 plan with a value of VND2,420 billion.

The Ministry of Finance said that projects using ODA loans and foreign preferential loans were affected more seriously by the Covid-19 pandemic than domestic projects because most activities were funded by ODA loans and preferential loans are all associated with foreign factors from the importation of machinery and equipment to the mobilization of foreign experts, workers, contractors, supervision consultants (projects of the transport industry).

This is also the biggest problem reported by ministries and sectors at the conference, causing many projects to be delayed and unable to be implemented, affecting capital disbursement.

Speaking at the conference, ministries and sectors also specifically reported on the disbursement progress of ODA loans and foreign preferential loan projects. The Ministry of Transport reached the highest rate in disbursement, it is estimated that it would reach 51% of the assigned plan by the end of August.

In particular, seven ministries and sectors could not disburse and asked for a refund of up to VND4,099 billion, of that, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development asked to pay a large amount of capital with VND1,800 billion; Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences was VND1,135 billion; the rest of the ministries asked to return the capital from VND87 to 500 billion.

Most of the participants at the conference affirmed that after the capital is transferred, they commit to disburse 100% of the remaining capital in 2020.

To speed up the disbursement of ODA and foreign loans in 2020, the Ministry of Finance recommended that leaders of ministries and sectors should consider the completion of the 2020 public investment disbursement plan as an important political task of each ministry or sector and has a commitment to the disbursement schedule of public investment capital from ODA and foreign preferential loans at the level of 100% of the assigned estimate, taking as a basis for assessment of task accomplishment.

In the case that it was not expected to fully disburse 100% of the plan, the Ministry of Finance requested the leaders of ministries and sectors to give directives on clearly determining the expected disbursement rate and the reason for not being accomplished.

Regarding the remaining foreign capital allocated in previous years, if it was able to disburse, the ministries and sectors should synthesize the missing public investment plans for the Ministry of Planning and Investment to synthesize and balance for the whole period of 2016-2020, but it should not exceed the plan assigned by the National Assembly.

In the case of capital reduction or transfer, the Ministry of Finance requested ministries and sectors to have documents for proposing to cut, reduce or transfer their capital right in August 2020.

In the future, the Ministry of Finance would coordinate with ministries, sectors and localities to organize inspection groups to urge disbursement, remove arising problems, and ensure the completion of targets on public investment capital disbursement using sources of ODA loans and foreign preferential loans of the whole country.