Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Dinh La Thang this morning urged responsible public agencies to solve difficulties for real estate businesses, review and simplify administrative procedures at the maximum level and consider this as a breakthrough solution to reclaim businesses’ belief.
After listening to reports about the real estate market by chairman of the HCMC Real Estate Association (Horea) Le Hoang Chau, he urged the city to solve difficulties for real estate businesses.
The real estate market is one of significant factors in boosting the city’s economic growth and contributing in the country’s growth target of 6.7 percent this year, he said.
At the meeting, Mr. Chau reported to the secretary that the real estate market is still under recovery and growth phase.
Compared to 2015 when the market saw a strong growth in all segments, but it showed signs of slowdown in the first five months this year with implicit unstable factors. For instance, transactions have slowed down and leaned toward high grade segment while there is a shortage of small and medium apartments having one to two bedrooms, affordable for a lot of citizens.
In addition, there is a strong increase in the number of secondary transactions.
The market has also seen some project investors not abide by regulations on investment and construction. Many apartment blocks have been opened for dwellers while yet to meet relevant conditions. Some businesses have not complied with regulations on mortgage and house sale causing damage to consumers and affecting social welfare. Conflicts have become complex in a number of apartment buildings.
Forecasting the real estate market in the last seven months this year, Mr. Chau said that the market would be better than the first five months. However, it would be still in the state of slowdown for the entire year.
According to Mr. Chau, although the Government and the city’s leaders have pledged to change and create some mechanisms and solve existing difficulties for businesses, the real estate market has till faced many problems including land use fee.
The land use fee is a large budget revenue source of the city but many investors have to queue waiting for paying the fee. This is because the process to determine the fee is unreasonable for being undertaken by the Department of Finance and the Department of Natural Resources and Environment.
The later department organizes online bidding to choose consultant companies to determine land price and propose the land use fee of projects. Afterwards, it will transfer the proposal to the Department of Finance to assess the fee level.
If agreeing with the proposed fee, the Finance Department will submit the proposal to the city People’s Committee to get a final decision. If disagreeing, it will send documents back to the Environment Department to do procedures again. This process has been irrational and time consuming.
Before the Land Law 2013 took effect, only the Department of Finance was in charge of assessing the land use fee, so it was faster than now.
Therefore, Horea proposed the city to assign either of the departments to take responsibility for the process to save time, clear backlogged documents for investors to implement their projects and not to miss their opportunities.
Mr. Chau said the current land use fee assessment phase is a lucrative land for corruption and other profit seekers and proposed the city’s leaders to pay attention to supervise this and especially cadre management.
In response to Mr. Chau’s opinion, director of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment Nguyen Toan Thang said that the city has built a process to determine land prices for compensation or other financial obligations within 30 days. The process is available on the department’s website, he added.
Meantime, a representative of the Department of Finance said that they have conducted assessment works within five days after receiving documents from the Environment Department. However he also admitted that the land price determination of some projects has been slow because of cadres’ faults although that plays a very important role to conduct following steps of projects.
