In fact, PPP programmes in Vietnam have achieved very good results. Mr Le Van Tang, Director of the Procurement Management Department, said, to follow the guidance of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Planning and Investment was assigned to be a coordinator to work with relevant organs in the country and international organisations to compile the Decree on PPP Investment on the basis of merging the Decree 108/2009/ND-CP and the Decision 71/2010/QD-TTg on contract-based investment and issue the Regulations on Pilot PPP Investment. Besides, the ministry has worked with relevant ministries, branches and localities to prepare PPP projects to submit to the Prime Minister to add to the list of PPP projects to prepare counterpart budgets for 2014 and 2015 and for the period from 2016 to 2020.

Mr Chong Teck Wei, Vice President of the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, said most PPP projects are related to infrastructure and they usually require huge capital in the long run. Therefore, the official capital from international contractors and the government is not enough for these projects; thus, the financial contribution from private sector is needed. In addition to sharing financial burdens, the participation of many investors will also help share unwanted risks and contribute experiences to PPP projects. Moreover, that project financing plan is the way to resolve difficulties of this type of project. In fact, project funding is a way to raise a large amount of long-term capital. Projects can raise non-recourse loans or recourse- limited loans from investors. Furthermore, this project financing mechanism can be tailored to meet particular requirements and special characteristics of specific PPP project.

In the perspective of State management, Ms Vu Quynh Le, Director of PPP Office and Deputy Director of Procurement Management Department, said that applying PPP model to improve the investment quality of public services is the way the Government of Vietnam chooses to go in the current period. However, to bring this kind of investment to life and generate benefits as desired, we must have suitable approaches to achieve better infrastructure results and have higher currency value than traditional forms of public procurement.

Using huge amount of capital in a long term, projects may face regrettable risks. The effort of main contractors and subcontractors are not enough to deal with these difficulties but the assistance of the Government is needed. So, according to experts, such measures as support, investment policy and legal framework for PPP investment need to be completed by the Government of Vietnam soon.

Source: VCCI