Nguyen Hong Tien, director of the ministry’s Technical Infrastructure Department, told the Daily on Tuesday that the ministry’s progress has been held up by numerous overlapping issues involving various ministries. Tien said, for instance, the Ministry of Transport is responsible for traffic circulation at underground car parks, while the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment is in charge of land use and the Ministry of Construction oversees underground car park construction.
Last November, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung adopted a decision regulating the implementation of pilot PPP projects in a bid to encourage private investors to engage in infrastructure development. PPP involves collaboration between the government and the private sector in carrying out projects with social benefits. Both sides share the responsibilities and risks of such projects. The government now allows PPPs in nine sectors including airport and seaports, energy, roads, railway, water supply, healthcare and urban transport.
It is undeniable that Vietnam is of the fastest and largest growing aviation markets in South East Asia and the world. With good government support, economic and infrastructure development, its aviation has gone a long way to reach today’s standards. The continued growth of the Vietnamese economy, people’s increasing purchasing power and desire to travel are obviously vital elements for Vietnam’s aviation to grow in significance.
The Central Goverment and Ha Tinh Province have so far invested in 93 infrastructure projects in the EZ with a total investment of VND2 trillion (US$95 million).
Under the new decree, health, education, cultural and sport infrastructure projects, as well as head offices of State entities have been added to the list of projects encouraged to register under one of these investment forms.
Currently, the country is investing about only 3.5 percent of GDP in traffic infrastructure each year. Normally, in the other countries in the world, even during the hot development stage, the total investment for traffic system accounted for only 7-8 percent or highest at 10 percent of GDP. Therefore, Hanoi’s spending on traffic system accounts for over 20 percent of GDP, two-fold higher than that of other countries and six times higher than that of the whole country will be a record figure.
Traditionally, most Asian infrastructure projects have been funded by governments or domestic banks. Foreign investors were mostly excluded. Those that were allowed to participate faced severe restrictions, including complex regulatory and legal regimes, uneven workforce quality, and occasional political interference. In the wake of the financial crisis, however, we have started to see signs that global private capital is increasingly welcome. The combined effects of increased stimulus spending and reduced tax receipts have increased deficits, with the result that restrictions on foreign investment are easing and a growing number of projects are being carried out under public–private partnerships (PPP). We estimate that over the next ten years fully $1 trillion of the $8 trillion of projected infrastructure projects will be open to private investors under PPPs. The questions for owners of global capital are how to identify the opportunities, how to mitigate the main risks, and how to develop appropriate entry strategies.
This year, the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) was recognized as the best performer in infrastructure development in the fixed telephone sector and the military-run telecom group, Viettel, as the most effective operator.
The National Investment Promotion Programme this year would focus on attracting investment in support industries and in private-public partnership projects in infrastructure, Nguyen Thi Bich Van, deputy head of the Foreign Investment Agency, said. It would particularly turn to investors with expertise in these areas, especially from Japan and South Korea, she said.
The plan calls for improved infrastructure and growth rates of 7-9 per cent a year in passenger and goods transport. The plan to 2020, which extends to 2030, calls for building 580km of new expressways and major provincial roads, as well as upgrading existing roads. Under the plan, 80 per cent of rural roads would be paved by 2020.
Economists attributed the underdevelopment to poor infrastructure coming from the uncompleted POS system of banks; card accepting posts such as goods and service providers (supermarket, shops, shopping malls, hotels, hospitals, stations, coach stations…) do not preferred using non-cash payment transactions for the fear that their revenues are supervised and they do not want to pay fees for banks. According to international norms, the fee card accepting posts have to pay to banks is 3% of payment amount via cards.
The summit, which ended on Jan. 22, discussed issues related to the Indian government’s development strategies for its northeastern region which has a great tourism and economic potential, especially in mining, infrastructure, agriculture, and food processing.
"Shell is of the world's leading corporations to resume its business in Viet Nam during the early years of the country's renewal process," said Triet. He asked Shell to expand its operations in Viet Nam in the energy and infrastructure sectors.
President Triet expressed his wish that Shell group as of the world’s leaders in its field, will continue to make further contribution to Vietnam’s socio-economic development. With its expertise in petro-chemistry, the group can expand its activities to new fields such as energy and infrastructure.
At the top of the inspection list will be infrastructure projects carried out under the forms of build-operate-transfer (BOT), build-transfer (BT) and build-transfer-operate (BTO) in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Many problems have arisen from BT and BOT project management ever since local governments were given more power in investment licencing and management in late 2006. Inspections will commence from the first quarter of 2011.
Copyright 2010 © VietnamNewsToday.com
Powered by: CIINS Design by: Webdesign.vn