He was speaking at a session organized by NA Finance-Budget Commission on mobilization, allocation, use and management of ODA and foreign preferential loans in the phase of 2016-2020.
According to Mr. Hien, ODA loans are necessary as the country still needs capital for development investment. Compared to other loans from the financial market, ODA is still helpful with low internet rate and long loaning time. Both creditors and borrowers have clear targets so it is better to control and estimate ODA loans.
Talking about the reverse of ODA, Mr. Hien said that loaning conditions are rather strict with some regulations aiming to create advantages for investors and contractors.
Mentioning ODA loan lessons from Greece, Ireland and some European economies, Mr. Hien required the Finance-Budget Commission to carefully estimate good and wrong sides as well as impacts of ODA to social, economic and political conditions of the country in its supervision report.
For the last past, ODA funds has helped improve infrastructure, management level and boost economic development. No sponsors or investors have expressed opinions about Vietnam’s violations in loan agreements for the last two years.
However, in fact ODA capital management, allocation and use have not been reformed drastically to remedy problems in previous phases. Specifically, beyond estimates spending has still occurred and capital mobilization has not been decided by competent authorities.
Implementation of the 2013 Constitution has not been serious, violation of the law and NA resolutions on finance and mid-term public investment has still occurred. Similarly, loan and investment structures, priority order and investment efficiency in each field and project have shown limitations.
To repair these limitations, Mr. Phung Quoc Hien proposed the Government to estimate the impact of 1,155 projects using ODA funds for the last phase.
In addition, the Government should make clear positive and negative points to promote and overcome after two years of implementing the NA resolution on financial and mid-term public investment plans. This should be conducted at the sixth session in October 2018.
He also suggested the Government to list and estimate ODA funded projects approved by incompetent authorities, give solutions to tackle them and report to the NA.
Mr. Hien prompted to strictly handle violations and renew public investment, public debt and ODA capital management method toward efficiency not disbursement progress and spell out responsibilities of relevant sides.
After the session, the Finance-Budget Commission should quickly send a report to the standing committee of the National Assembly about the ODA use matter.
