Vietnam needs to invest in infrastructure, including transport, urban development, and energy. The question is how to fund these projects.

The state budget cannot cover all these costs, as it also needs to fund social welfare and national defense.

The government is looking for ways to fund infrastructure projects outside of the state budget, and BT projects can be a solution.

Experts say that laws have changed to reduce the risks of BT projects and increase transparency in using land funds and public assets.

The 2020 PPP Law was a key change, as it stopped BT contracts from being part of new PPP projects. This was a temporary pause to review and improve the legal framework.

The 2024 Land Law now controls the use of land funds to pay investors, and all land funds must be valued using market mechanisms.

The 2017 Law on Management and Use of Public Assets also added regulations to ensure independent price appraisals and public disclosure of asset use plans.

There is now stronger monitoring and a more rigorous post-audit mechanism to reduce the risk of violating regulations.

The problems of land valuation and payment mechanisms need to be solved.

The principle of equivalent value has been clearly stated in Decree 257/2025/ND-CP.

Land valuation must consider many factors, and high land prices can make housing unaffordable. Some countries increase taxes instead of relying on high land valuation.

If land prices do not reflect market prices, the state may lose public assets, and investors may doubt the project's transparency. Accurate land valuation is crucial.

The new legal framework from the 2024 Land Law has changed land valuation, abolishing the land price frame mechanism and using market principles.

There are still concerns that BT projects lack a unified mechanism for determining infrastructure construction costs.

According to Nhan, the lack of a unified mechanism for determining construction costs has led to distortions in the exchange between infrastructure value and land value.

To make BT transparent, it is not enough to value land properly; infrastructure itself must also be valued correctly.

Nhan argued that the legal foundation for controlling construction costs is now more complete, thanks to the 2014 Construction Law and updated cost norms.

He believes that BT costs should be controlled from the project preparation stage using standardized investment benchmarks and comparing projects to standard costs.

Tran Chung