The Prime Minister criticized 28 ministries, agencies and 18 localities for low disbursement of public investment

At the conference on public investment on April 24, Prime Minister Le Minh Hung asked ministers, industry heads, and local leaders to “seriously review and review the progress and quality of public investment disbursement for immediate changes.”

Accordingly, the Prime Minister praised 7 ministries, agencies and 16 localities with disbursement rates higher than the national average. On the contrary, he criticized 28 ministries, agencies and 18 localities for disbursement below the average level.

The Prime Minister said that public investment is still spread out, investment preparation is weak, procedures are cumbersome, allocation is slow, site clearance is not on schedule, and raw material sources are not guaranteed. Meanwhile, coordination agencies are not synchronized and the role of the leader has not been promoted.

“Slow disbursement and not running out of capital has become a long-term problem, and strong measures must be taken to handle it,” he said.

In fact, investment is an important growth driver, in which public investment plays a leading role, activating private capital flows and FDI, promoting production and business. This source of money helps increase total social investment capital, supporting rapid and sustainable growth. According to calculations, in the period 2021-2025, disbursed public investment capital increases by 1%, GDP can increase by 0.058 percentage points.

According to the Prime Minister, slow disbursement is largely due to subjective reasons when on the same legal basis, some ministries, branches and localities are doing well, while others are sluggish. Some ministries, agencies, and localities lack inspection and supervision, are not serious about handling projects that are behind schedule, and even have a mentality of waiting, avoiding, and fearing responsibility.

Besides, the coordination between agencies lacks tightness; The capacity of some investors, management boards and contractors is still limited. Some localities are still slow in site clearance, lacking construction materials and fluctuating labor costs.

In 2026, the total public investment capital plan assigned by the Prime Minister is over 1 million billion VND, accounting for nearly 35.5% of total budget expenditure. This level is 30.6% higher than last year. By April 15, the whole country disbursed nearly 127,400 billion VND, reaching 12.6% of the plan assigned by the Prime Minister.

Concluding the Conference, Prime Minister Le Minh Hung affirmed that the Government determines public investment to be an important driving force to achieve double-digit growth goals, synchronous infrastructure development and open up new development space. Therefore, public investment must be accelerated in disbursement, along with ensuring project quality and capital use efficiency.

He assigned the Ministry of Finance to research and develop a scoring plan (KPI) for implementing the disbursement of public investment capital, reporting before May 15. Ministries, branches and localities, especially leaders, must identify disbursement of public investment capital as a “top priority task”.

“We must specifically assign leaders and officers in charge of each project, and individualize responsibilities as a basis for evaluating the results of task implementation,” he said, and at the same time requested to immediately replace the project management board, contractors, and weak personnel who do not meet the requirements.