Disbursement of public investment is still slow which affects economic growth, drags other private and foreign reciprocal capital flows, wasting and employment reduction ... To improve the disbursement efficiency of public investment, it is necessary to enhance the role of the State Auditor and improve the quality of auditing public investment projects.

That is the opinion of many speeches presented at the Workshop "Improving the efficiency of disbursement of public investment capital and the role of the State Audit", organized by the State Audit Office in coordination with relevant agencies that took place in Hanoi this morning (September 22, 2020).

According to the Ministry of Finance, in the first 8 months of 2020, the disbursement of public investment capital according to the 2020 plan will only reach VND 221,768 billion, equal to 47% of the plan assigned by the Prime Minister; in which, central budget capital reached 37.8% of the plan and local budget capital reached 55.1% of the plan. Although the disbursed capital increased compared to the same period in 2019, the disbursement rate was still lower than expected.

In recent years, beside the objective factor, the State Audit has pointed out many shortcomings and loopholes about mechanisms and policies in management the audit of public investment projects. Public investment management, especially investment projects in the form of public private partnerships; State management agencies' management and supervision have not been regularly and fully implemented according to their assigned functions and tasks; the management, administration and implementation of investment in many places are still slow in completing procedures and delivering detailed capital plans; clearance problems; contractor selection and construction organization are slow; a number of ministries, branches, localities and project management units have not been proactive and drastic in directing and administering; the role and responsibility of the head in leadership, direction and execution of public investment has not been highly appreciated ...

Representatives of the Ministry of Finance said that every year, the State Audit has discovered many errors through auditing public investment projects, proposed to handle tens of thousands of billion VND recovered to the State budget to help the Government and investment management agencies promptly reorganized, overcoming, and contributed to improving the efficiency of the implementation and disbursement of public investment capital.

From a local perspective, the representative of the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City affirmed: In the implementation of public investment, the city government has reviewed and drastically directed departments, agencies, and People's Committees at all levels ... according to the law. However, the risk of waste and weaknesses in management and implementation in many stages from investment policy, investment preparation ect. to capital allocation, acceptance and handover of works and settlement of investment capital works still exists. Auditing activities of the State Audit have actively supported the city in monitoring and deciding important issues. The conclusion and audit results are an important basis for the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City to consider, decide and supervise the contents of the State budget and public investment, and strengthen the management.

The State Audit plays an important role in promoting and improving the efficiency of public investment through audits pointing out shortcomings, shortcomings, limitations in policies, laws, management ... and recommend solutions for handling and overcoming. However, Mr. Doan Xuan Tien - Deputy State Auditor General said: Auditing activities for public investment projects in recent years still have many limitations and shortcomings, the quality of the audit is not really good. The audit scale and frequency are still small compared to the requirement to control the objects using public finance and public assets, especially in the construction investment field. The in-depth audit activities are still limited, so it has not yet deeply answered the issues of management efficiency, use of public finance, public assets, corruption, loss and waste in investment projects using the State budget. The qualifications, capacity and knowledge of auditors still need to be improved in order to catch up with the development trend ... These are problems in the coming time, the State Auditor needs to have solutions to improve role, efficiency and quality of auditing work, thereby contributing to the transparency of the national financial system, especially for public investment projects to ensure projects are disbursed and completed properly in progress to improve efficiency.