VietNamNet Bridge – Land-related corruption has become widespread and Vietnamese people are familiar with it like with floods after downpours in Hanoi, said director of the Center for Public Research and Development Dang Ngoc Dinh on the occasion the report on corruption in land management in Vietnam released.

The report, entitled “Recognizing and reducing corruption risks in the land management sector in Vietnam” and compiled by the World Bank and the Embassies of Denmark and Sweden, was made public last week in Hanoi.

Speaking at the ceremony, Danish Ambassador to Vietnam John Nielsen said that land-related corruption was a challenge for Vietnam, which enlarges the gap between the rich and the poor. Corruption in this field is urged by the monopoly in making decision in some provinces and the lack of information transparence.

Surveys conducted in Lang Son, Bac Ninh, Binh Dinh and Tien Giang provinces and HCM City showed that 78 percent of the interviewees believed that corruption occurred mostly with land allocation, recovery, compensation and resettlement, of which 38 percent said this type of corruption was very widespread.

About 92 percent of the people interviewed agreed that cases involving the illegal sale of land and illegal land allocation happened in every province.

According to the report, some current policies make land-related corruption become a huge source of profit, for example the policy to revoke land and set the compensation prices at lower level than the market prices. The procedures to grant land use right certificate is troublesome and time-consuming so it encourages people to bribe officials. Even retired high-ranking officials have to give bridges to receive the land use right certificates. This is a big problem for the poor who can’t afford to pay for such “services”.

Deputy chief of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment’s General Department of Land Management Dao Trung Chinh explained that the reasons for corruption is that the land management agencies have a shortage of staff. For example, some communes in Binh Thuan province have up to 20,000-30,000 hectares of land but they have only one official in charge of land-related issues.

Professor Dang Ngoc Dinh from the Center for Community Research and Development, a member of the research group, said that “corruption culture” in land management had become so familiar to people that they expect it like they do floods whenever there is a rain downpour in Hanoi.

He said provincial governments had big power in allocating and fixing prices of land and that this was the source of corruption. He suggested restricting the power of district and province governments over land management.

Professor Dang Hung Vo, former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, said that corruption was caused by the low income of land-management officials. The land management policy in Vietnam is problematic, he said, as after paying compensation for the people whose land is revoked, the investors who are allocated land no longer pay attention to the fate of these people. “In China, investors have to pay annual land leasing fees to people whose land is revoked. This ensures justice and the interest of those who lose the land,” Vo said.

The expert said that land in Vietnam was now in an unclear situation and for anti-corruption to be effective a long period of time is needed, but he believed that it would reduce gradually.

Director of the World Bank in Vietnam Victoria Kwakwa said fighting against land-related corruption, considered to be a big challenge for Vietnam, might take time and effort.

By simplifying land-related administrative procedures and increasing transparency and the accountability of people involved in such deals would help eradicate land-management corruption in the country, she said.

“I have great expectations of new high-ranking officials who can take action to solve challenges like corruption,” she said.

PV