“Where there is the community taking part in planning and monitoring the implementation of public investment projects, there are the satisfaction of the people and the trust between the people and local governments,” said a report on public opinions on the Draft Law on Public Investment.
Public investment plays an important role in sustainable and equitable social and economic development and generates driving force for national development. Public investment also directly impacts the effective management of State budgets and other public resources. Therefore, drafting and enacting a specific law on this effect is a correct policy of the Government in an effort to improve public investment efficiency.
Currently, State-invested works are inefficient and public monitoring mechanisms are yet to be fully implemented and lack of substance. From February to May 2014, the Action Centre for Community Development Community (ACDC), the Centre for Community Empowerment (CECEM), the Centre for Development and Integration (CDI), the Centre for Education Promotion and Empowerment for Women (CEPEW), and the Cooperation Group for Governance and Public Administration Reform (GPAR) with the support of Oxfam and the National Assembly’s Commission for Financial and Budgetary Affairs surveyed citizens and local government officials in four provinces of Hoa Binh, Nam Dinh, Quang Tri and Vung Tau on the enforcement of the Law on State Budget 2002, covering the management and use of State funds in public investment projects, with many contents directly relating to the Public Investment Law.
According to consultation results, where there is the community taking part in planning and monitoring the implementation of public investment projects, there are the satisfaction of the people and the trust between the people and local governments. The participation of the people helps ensure the effectiveness of public investment as they have adequate information on design, cost estimation, schedule and progress of investment projects; they contribute ideas to designs to ensure the conformity with local cultural and actual situations; and they supervise the implementation progress and project quality. According to consultation results, the absence of public participation and supervision entails inefficiency, waste, and even harms local people.
Taking into account suggestions on public participation and supervision will help the Law on Public Investment is more practicable when it is enacted.
Specifically, the bill necessarily recognises the rights to participation of the people as subjects of supervising the enforcement of public power, the users of public investment works, and the subjects impacted by public investment. The law needs to supplement the principle of “ensuring the effective participation of the people in public investment.”
At the same time, the law must ensure effective and substantive mechanism for the people and the community to participate in and supervise directly, or via their representative organisations, the process of making public investment policies and plans, carrying out programmes and projects, and complying with investment plans. Especially, the people and the community at the grassroots level have the right to participate and monitor public investment programmes and projects if such programmes and projects directly impact or relate to the exercise of the people’s rights and obligations.
In addition, the law specifies monitoring forms appropriate for specific groups of contents subjected to supervision as well as responsibilities of agencies and organisations involved in the receipt of monitoring results. It also stipulates expert consultations and opinions for complicated, highly professional programmes and projects or those with huge impacts on the environment and the society.
Translating aspirations and thoughts of the people into the Law on Public Investment will be one of important conditions to enhance the efficiency of public investment after it comes into effect.
Quynh Anh
Đăng ký: VietNam News
