Submit to the National Assembly for consideration some specific policies for the development of Ho Chi Minh City

Propose many new and innovative policies

Presenting the Report, Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung said that the goal of drafting the Resolution is to build specific and outstanding mechanisms and policies to create a legal basis to promote potential and advantages, create breakthroughs, resolve "bottlenecks" in socio-economic development of the City, contributing to the construction and development of Ho Chi Minh City as the goals set out in the Resolutions of the Politburo and the National Assembly.

The drafting of the Resolution is based on the viewpoint of ensuring compliance with the provisions of the 2013 Constitution, in line with the development orientation in Resolution No. 24 of the Politburo on socio-economic development of the Southeast region, Resolution No. 31 of the Politburo on socio-economic development of Ho Chi Minh City and Resolution No. 81 of the National Assembly on the National Master Plan.

The main content of the draft Resolution includes 7 groups of mechanisms and policies with 44 specific contents. These are policies stipulated in Resolution No. 54/2017/QH14 on piloting specific mechanisms and policies for the development of Ho Chi Minh City; in Resolutions on specific mechanisms applicable to other localities; in draft laws submitted to the National Assembly...

In addition, new policies are first prescribed with 4 groups of issues: Investment; finance - budget; land management, planning and organizational structure.

Among the new, breakthrough, and spillover mechanisms and policies (including 27 policy mechanisms), the Government proposes: In case the City expects to have local budget revenue to allocate increased development investment expenditure in the medium-term public investment plan, the City is allowed to allocate this revenue source to new projects in advance, supplement the medium-term public investment plan, as a basis for annual capital allocation and report to the National Assembly in the final year of the medium-term public investment plan.

The City is authorized to use public investment capital from the City budget to entrust the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies to provide loans to support poverty reduction and job creation.

In addition, the City is piloting the urban development model according to the transport development orientation (TOD): using local budgets to implement independent public investment projects to carry out compensation, support, and resettlement for investment projects in the vicinity of railway stations, the vicinity of traffic intersections along Ring Road 3 to recover land, carry out on-site resettlement and create land funds, and auction to select investors for urban development projects.

The city is allowed to expand the scope of investment under the public-private partnership (PPP) method for investment projects in the fields of sports and culture; and is allowed to proactively regulate the minimum total investment scale of these PPP projects.

The city is allowed to apply the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) Contract to existing road projects with implementation conditions that ensure the interests of the people; and to implement investment projects under the Build-Transfer (BT) Contract with payment from the city budget.

The city is allowed to use local budget to implement regional and inter-regional road traffic projects and works; support other localities in the country and some localities in other countries.

The draft Resolution stipulates mechanisms and preferential policies to attract strategic investors in areas such as chip manufacturing, semiconductor integrated circuit industry, new materials, etc.; conditions that strategic investors need to meet; procedures for project registration and selection of strategic investors; regulations on income tax exemption and reduction for individuals and enterprises operating in innovation and start-up activities in the fields of science and technology, innovation of the City, etc.

Avoid taking advantage of policies that cause loss and waste.

Chairman of the National Assembly's Finance and Budget Committee Le Quang Manh, representative of the Appraisal Agency, stated that the Committee agreed on the necessity of issuing the Resolution. The draft Resolution dossier is basically qualified to be submitted to the National Assembly at the 5th Session. However, to have a solid basis for the decision, the Committee suggested that the impact assessment report should be specific about both the positive aspects and the challenges, the unfavorable impacts during implementation; more detailed about the output results; especially the policies affecting the state budget revenue and expenditure; on the resources for implementation...

The issuance of the Resolution should take into account the principle that: Regulations need to promptly remove institutional obstacles that are hindering development, promoting potential, and overcoming inertia in implementing past orientations; but absolutely do not take advantage of law-making to legitimize violations. New policies need to be "breakthrough" and "outstanding" in accordance with the spirit of Resolution 24, Resolution 31 of the Politburo, Resolution 81 of the National Assembly; but need to be feasible, focused, not spread out; avoid taking advantage of policies that cause loss and waste.

The Finance and Budget Committee recommends that more attention should be paid to truly breakthrough policies, creating new changes in exploiting potential in accordance with Resolution 31; avoiding large numbers but limited weight.

Regarding the comprehensiveness and rationality of the policy, according to the reviewing agency, the draft Resolution focuses heavily on budget expenditure policies. However, budget revenue policies (such as taxes, fees, etc.) are still quite thin, while the City has its own characteristics and great advantages in exploiting revenue sources. Therefore, in the long term, the Committee recommends studying and having feasible revenue policies, contributing to balancing resources for budget expenditure policies.

The audit agency recommends reviewing policies that have a direct impact on the central budget, such as tax exemption and reduction proposals, to suit the current context, especially when preparing to apply the global minimum tax. Although a preferential mechanism is needed compared to other localities, it is necessary to attract talents and high-quality workers, but avoid creating too large a gap in income between workers.

The draft stipulates strong decentralization and delegation of authority; many powers are assigned to organizations and individuals. However, there is still a lack of provisions on responsibilities, so the Committee proposes to supplement them to ensure the principle of authority going hand in hand with responsibility.

According to the inspection agency, to implement these regulations, many documents guiding the implementation of the process and procedures are needed... Therefore, the Committee proposes to clearly stipulate in the implementation provisions the tasks that need to be implemented; assign specific responsibilities; avoid promulgating but not being able to operate because organizations and individuals do not know the basis for implementation. Regarding the authorization mechanism, it is proposed to ensure the correct principle of authorization; add regulations on strengthening supervision, inspection, and examination of implementation...

According to VNA