Recommendations on urban land-use planning and management submitted to the Government

On May 27, the 7th session of National Assembly (NA) spent a whole day working on urban land-use planning and management issues. Members of the NA were presented with a report assessing implementation of policies and legal regulations since the 2013 Land Law took effect. The report was prepared by the National Assembly’s supervision delegation on urban land-use planning and management.

According to the report, urban land-use planning and management related policies and the development legal regulations and their enforcement have significantly improved since 2013. However, some limitations remain. They include the lack of an effective policy to prevent land speculation; slow land validation; ineffective management of urban land-use planning; a lack of linkages between urban areas; asynchronous urban planning in accordance with urban infrastructure investment; and non-compliance of urban planning and architecture. Accordingly, the NA supervision delegation made specific proposals to the government of how to tackle these challenges.

For the NA, the following major recommendations were formulated:

• Issue a resolution on the continued enhancement of urban land planning and management related policy and law enforcement.
• Enhance the NA’s supervisory role over land-use management in general and urban land planning and management in particular.
• Assign the State Audit to develop an annual auditing program to accelerate audit activity on urban land-use planning and management.

For the Prime Minister, the following major recommendations were formulated:

• Better coordination of line ministries, branches and localities to address violations related to urban land-use planning.
• Reviewing and reporting on the amended 2013 Land Law and related laws, and amending the Decree providing guidelines for implementation of the Land Law.
• Preparation of regulations forbidding Vietnamese citizens to buy property, transfer land-use rights, and lease land on behalf of foreigners (foreign buyers).
• Developing 5-year land-use plans for 2021 – 2025 and 2025 – 2030 periods for submission to the 11th NA session in March 2021.
• Carrying out land allocation and land leasing in open and transparent ways for socio-economic development projects through project bidding considering land-use rights.
• Developing a sound real estate market with a strict supervision mechanism.