by Vu Kim Chung
An estimated US$450 million, 30 percent of Viet Nam's annual construction budget, is lost in corrupt payments, according to an expose in the Communist Party's central organ, the Nhan Dan (People) newspaper.
The report focused on a sports stadium in the northern city of Thai Nguyen, 80km from Hanoi.
It has been dubbed the project of the century - not because it is a grand undertaking but because, at the current rate of progress, it might be finished in 100 years.
After 15 years there are just a few pilings sunk - the work of a military engineering brigade and subsequently of the state-owned Bac Thai Construction Company.
The 25,000-seat stadium was meant to have been finished by 1985 and the military company had been provided with sufficient funds to do that.
Now officials are asking the central Government for 10 billion dong (US$720,000) - more than twice the original budget - to carry on the work. The stadium is scheduled to host a sports festival for ethnic minorities in September 1999.
The Nhan Dan expose explained that the key to fixing sweetheart deals is in the bidding. A winner is apparently decided among the bidders and the others put in higher bids in the knowledge they will receive kickbacks later. In other words, the other bidders are just token competitors. They will have their chance at winning a contract on another project through a similar scam.
The expose came after Nhan Dan reporters accompanied the Communist Party chief, Le Kha Phieu, on a visit to the town to see a loss-making Chinese-built cast iron and steel plant.
The Bai Thuong Dam reconstruction Project and the Ha Noi Dyke rehabilitation projects, financed by the Asian Development Bank and being implemented together with two Canadian engineering firms and an American engineering firm have been plagued with similar scams. The projects are badly behind schedule and improperly constructed as senior officials of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, together with local state-owned contractors and a Chinese contractor have rigged the bidding processes on the projects so that large amounts of money have disappeared. Implementation of the engineering consultant contract has also been subjected to irregularities. The Communist Party chief, Le Kha Phieu, has said he will instruct the authorities to investigate the matter on these projects and bring the contractors and consultants before the National Assembly office responsible for curtailing corruption. There is concern about this matter with respect to this project because the Asian Development Bank is investigating the transparency of the project management of its financed projects. This project is significant in that it was the first foreign-financed project with the ADB and it was the first project to use international contract bidding.