Deputy Minister of Construction Nguyen Tran Nam said that the ministry is moving ahead with the project on building houses for students, and that in the near future, students will have to pay less than 100,000 dong a month ($5) per person to rent a room.

There are three million students nationwide, but the operational dormitories can only meet 15-20 percent of the students’ demand for accommodations. Vietnam needs 30 trillion dong to build houses for students, or six trillion dong a year.

However, the situation will improve soon. Nam said the Ministry of Construction (MOC) asked the Prime Minister to use the capital raised from bond issuance to develop student accommodation.

Dormitories will be like commercial houses

The Government has submitted the plan to the National Assembly proposing to use eight trillion dong raised from Government bond issuance to develop houses for students. In the immediate time, the housing development will be carried out in the cities with more than 10,000 students.

Statistics show that only 15-20 percent of students can stay in university dormitories, while others have to rent rooms from urban residents. 94 projects on building accommodations for students had been implemented by August 2010, of which seven projects had been completed, providing accommodation for 150,000 students.

According to Nguyen Tran Nam, in 2009-2010, the house fund for students had 200,000-300,000 rooms? located mostly in big cities such as HCM City, Hanoi, Can Tho and Da Nang. As planned, in the 2011-2012, there will be well-equipped dormitories with basic facilities. Every student will pay less than 100,000 dong a month for the rooms, but they will still be able to use many facilities, such as Internet service, sports area, motorbike parking space. Nam stressed that the quality of the student accommodation will be in no way inferior to commercial houses.

According to Nguyen Manh Ha, Head of the House and Real Estate Market Management Department under MOC, the ministry will compile legal documents showing the procedures and the conditions for students to follow to rent rooms. All students, no matter whether they come from state owned or people founded schools, will enjoy the same conditions for renting rooms. However, the students with special circumstances, such as the ones from poor families or fromethnic minorities will enjoy priorities in renting rooms.

Also, according to Ha, with the current pace of construction work, by 2015, 60 percent of students will be able to have beds in university dormitories.

6 trillion dong needed every year

Nam from MOC stressed that it is impossible to rely on the state budget to develop accommodation for students, and that it is necessary to seek capital from different sources.

However, Nam admitted that it is very difficult to mobilise capital from the society.

Vietnam needs about 30 trillion dong to build accommodation for students, six trillion dong every year, which is a huge sum of money.

The survey on the implementation of the housing projects in some localities shows that the disbursement rate of projects is about 80-99 percent. There are many problems with the project implementation, and especially, the cooperation between government’s agencies and training establishments is still bad.

According to MOC, if the average growth rate of the past five years continues, by 2015, Vietnam will have 4.3 million students, and 70 percent of them (3 million students) will need university accommodation.

C. V