The way eco-social development plans have been prepared in Vietnam is turning into an obstruction to its growth and development, instead of giving the country a boost, top officials said on Monday.

The Ministry of Planning and Investment and the National Assembly Economic Committee met yesterday in Hanoi to give a preliminary assessment on the Law on Planning bill, with officials pointing out numerous planning problems at all levels, from the ministries and industries to local administrations.

Vietnam now has more than 18,000 plans at all levels, but “the quality of these numerous plans does not live up to the money and resources they require,” Deputy Minister of Planning Dang Huy Dong said.

Dong added that there are planned projects that are “unnecessary, unrealistic or infeasible, resulting in wasted resources for the country.”

According to the deputy minister, many plans in Vietnam either overlap or contradict, and there is a lack of consistency and connectivity between different planning projects.

Dong said planning “should have been an important tool for state management,” but in Vietnam’s planning system, the three most important factors – objective, strategy and solution – seem to stay apart, rather than stick together.

“More importantly, it is easy to change a plan, which decreases its effectiveness and leads to corruption,” the deputy minister said.

“For instance, an urban area is primarily zoned for low-level buildings, but for some reason, plans are changed to allow high-rises, regardless of the negative impacts the change may cause to the environment and local infrastructure.”

The upcoming Law on Planning should therefore resolve all of the above issues, so that eco-social development plans “can really become a management tool and boost the country’s growth,” Dong said.

The Law on Planning bill is scheduled to be assessed by the National Assembly Standing Committee, before its final submission to the legislature for approval next month.

‘My-term mindset’

Vo Kim Cu, a member of the National Assembly Economic Committee, addressed another planning issue that has existed for ages in Vietnam: every entity prepares its own planning, with little knowledge of what others are doing.

“Every province wants to develop seaports, airports, and industrial parks in their locality, which is clearly a waste of resources,” he said.

“You can never have all the agricultural, industrial and hi-tech developments in one single province; this is something no other country in the world is doing.”

Cu said that what should be done is end the so-called “my-term mindset,” in which a leader tends to approve as many major projects under his term as possible, only to neglect the responsibilities once leaving office.

“We have to set penalties for those who duck responsibility for the wrong plans they make,” he said.

Interestingly enough, Cu was the man who opened the door for Formosa Plastics Group to begin operations in the north-central province of Ha Tinh when he was the province’s top official in 2008, with the Taiwanese company later severely damaging the environment there.

At that time, Cu gave permission for Formosa to operate its steel mill in the province’s Vung Ang Economic Zone for 70 years, going against the 50-year limit as governed by the Vietnamese law on investment.

He said he had been backed by the prime minister to give such a huge incentive to Formosa, but has so far provided no evidence for that.

Following Formosa’s admission to having caused the mass fish deaths in four central provinces in April and May, for which it has paid $500 million, Cu explicitly denied his responsibility for approving the Formosa operations.

Despite this, he was then appointed a member of the legislature’s Economic Committee in late July.

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