Reasons why the Ministry of Home Affairs proposed to stop merging districts and communes according to old criteria

Yesterday, although it was a holiday, the Ministry of Home Affairs still worked to issue an official dispatch to the People's Committees of provinces and cities regarding the temporary suspension of certain tasks related to administrative units at all levels.

Accordingly, the Ministry proposed that the People's Committees of provinces and centrally-run cities temporarily suspend the submission of projects to arrange and establish administrative units at district and commune levels according to Resolution No. 1211/2016 of the National Assembly Standing Committee.

The Ministry also requested provinces and cities to temporarily stop classifying administrative units at all levels; temporarily stop appraising and accepting records and maps of administrative unit boundaries at all levels (Project 513) and create new, edit and supplement records and maps of administrative unit boundaries at all levels according to the Resolution of the National Assembly Standing Committee on the arrangement of each administrative unit at district and commune levels in the period 2023 - 2025.

In addition, localities also temporarily suspend the construction of the master plan component of district and commune-level administrative units for the period up to 2030, with a vision to 2045, as required in Official Dispatch No. 8657 dated December 31, 2024 of the Ministry until there is a new policy from the competent authority.

All of these contents are ongoing tasks according to Conclusion No. 48 of the Politburo and Resolution No. 35/2023 of the National Assembly Standing Committee on continuing to rearrange administrative units at district and commune levels for the 2023-2030 period.

The policy of rearranging administrative units at all levels is implemented according to Resolution 18, the 6th conference of the 12th Central Committee in 2017 (on a number of issues on continuing to innovate and rearrange the organization of the political system to be streamlined and operate effectively and efficiently).

Recently, the whole country has carried out two rounds of reorganization and merger of administrative units at district and commune levels for the periods 2019 - 2021 and 2023 - 2025.

After 2 phases, the number of district-level administrative units decreased from 713 to 696; the number of commune-level administrative units decreased from 11,162 to 10,035.

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Home Affairs continued to guide and urge 51 localities to implement the arrangement of district and commune-level administrative units for the 2023-2025 period approved by the National Assembly Standing Committee; urgently arrange, organize, and assign civil servants and public employees, handle public assets after the arrangement, and ensure early stability for the organization of party congresses at all levels.

The Ministry of Home Affairs is also continuing to review and propose plans to merge district and commune-level administrative units for administrative units that do not meet the criteria on area and population according to Resolution No. 35/2023 of the National Assembly Standing Committee to proactively plan to arrange district and commune-level administrative units in the period 2023 - 2030.

Thus, before the Politburo's Conclusion 127 on February 28 on the reorganization of the political system, which included the development of a project to merge a number of provincial-level administrative units, not organize the district level, and continue to merge commune-level administrative units, the whole country was also developing projects to reorganize district- and commune-level administrative units for the period 2025 - 2030.

Therefore, when there is a new policy on merging provinces, abolishing the district level, continuing to merge communes according to Conclusion 127 of the Politburo and in fact, localities are urgently building projects to implement this new policy, stopping the merging of district and commune administrative units as done before is inevitable.

Mr. Phan Trung Tuan, Director of the Department of Local Government, Ministry of Home Affairs, said that the suspended tasks are the tasks that localities are performing according to the previous Resolution of the National Assembly Standing Committee.

Meanwhile, the localities are developing projects to merge provincial-level administrative units, abolish the district level, and continue to merge commune-level administrative units according to Conclusion 127 of the Politburo, which is still being implemented with the spirit of "lightning speed", "only discuss doing, not discussing back".

According to the new policy of the Politburo and the Secretariat, in the coming time, provinces and cities will rearrange and reorganize administrative units at all levels according to the 2-level local government model: Provincial level (cities directly under the Central Government) and grassroots level.

The whole country will merge some provinces to reduce the number of provinces and cities by 50%; abolish the district level and merge the commune level, reducing it to 60 - 70%, that is, about 3,000 communes.

This content is also being consulted with Party committees, sectors and localities for the Politburo to submit to the 11th Central Conference for consideration and approval in April.

Then, in June, the National Assembly Standing Committee will pass resolutions on merging commune-level administrative units. The National Assembly will pass a resolution on merging provincial-level administrative units.

The commune merger under the new policy will be completed and put into operation from July 1. In August, the provinces will merge provinces and operate provincial-level administrative units according to the 2-level local government model from September 1.