Joint Circular No. 25/TT-LB guiding the management, allocation, and repair funding for inland waterways

CIRCULAR

Guidelines for managing and allocating funds for inland waterway management and maintenance

The work of managing and maintaining inland waterways has the task of managing and repairing facilities on rivers and improving channels to ensure safe and convenient transportation.

Unlike road and maritime traffic, inland waterway traffic is significantly affected by the complex changes in rivers and streams in our country, heavily influenced by rain and floods, such as frequent changes in river flow and sediment deposition forming banks and altering channel depths. Therefore, planning for the management and maintenance of inland waterways often becomes reactive, unable to anticipate the volumes required to ensure traffic. Thus, the work of managing and maintaining inland waterways, as well as planning for fund allocation, is very complicated, requiring careful study and arrangement to suit these specific conditions.

To enhance the sense of responsibility and expand the autonomy of agencies managing and using funds for inland waterway management and maintenance, promoting units managing inland waterways to organize economic accounting, improve the efficiency of production and business operations; the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Transport issued a circular guiding the management, allocation, and settlement of funds for inland waterway management and maintenance as follows:

I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES ON FUNDS FOR MANAGEMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF INLAND WATERWAYS

REPAIR OF WATERWAYS

1. Funds for the management and maintenance of inland waterways are only to be used directly for the work of managing and maintaining channels, the existing information and signal systems on operational river routes, combined with political activities to continuously improve the quality of channels to serve water transport tasks.

Costs for salvaging and clearing obstacles on rivers caused by transport units, construction units... must be settled by those units with the inland waterway management enterprise. In cases where obstacles are caused by natural factors or cannot be attributed to any individual, the costs for salvage and clearance can be covered from the funds for management and maintenance of inland waterways. In this case, salvaged assets must be valued based on the current state pricing framework and recorded as supplementary funding from the state budget allocated to the management and maintenance of inland waterways.

2. Funds allocated for the management and maintenance of inland waterways must closely align with the objectives of the water transport plan and the plan for utilizing and exploiting channels, while also achieving high economic efficiency.

3. The regular allocation of funds for the management and maintenance of inland waterways must follow established standards and planned indicators approved by competent authorities. Non-routine traffic assurance volumes, such as mechanical dredging, major repairs, and minor construction of river control works, permanent signal repairs... can only be allocated when there are complete design documents, approved budgets, and they fall within the assigned plan indicators.

4. Units receiving funds for the management and maintenance of inland waterways must report and settle accounts with the funding unit according to regulations.

5. The unit managing inland waterway traffic is responsible for managing, using, and settling accounts for funds according to the provisions and guidelines of this Circular.

6. All expenses exceeding the standard, outside the design budget, or beyond the plan indicators shall not be settled or accounted for, except in special cases permitted by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Transport to supplement capital indicators.

II. ESTABLISHING BUDGET PLANS FOR FUNDS FOR MANAGEMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF INLAND WATERWAYS

1. Tasks and contents of the work of managing and maintaining inland waterways.

a) Tasks of the work of managing and maintaining inland waterways:

- Inspecting and determining the positions of buoys and signals;

- Surveying sandbars, sounding channels, and planning dredging operations;

- Salvaging buoys before the rainy season and repositioning them after the rainy season;

- Replacing, majorly repairing, and minor constructing information and signaling facilities on rivers;

- Identifying obstacles impeding river flow, organizing salvage and clearance;

- Regularly maintaining signaling facilities and buoys;

- Major and regular repairs of waterway service vessels to ensure traffic;

- Lighting lamps to ensure nighttime signal visibility;

- Monitoring weather, hydrology, water levels, flow direction, speed, and channel erosion to inform vessel owners;

- Participating in traffic law enforcement activities.

b) Contents of the work of managing and maintaining inland waterways:

Based on the tasks of managing and maintaining inland waterways defined above, the expenditure items of the work of managing and maintaining inland waterways can be determined as follows:

- Regular expenditures include management costs that are difficult to quantify specifically, such as inspections, preservation of shore and underwater signaling, buoy salvage, deployment, adjustment, lighting, and lamp replacement; monitoring hydrological, meteorological, flow velocity, and direction conditions, and reporting channel conditions to management agencies and vessel owners... and regular repairs of signaling and information systems, channel control works on river routes managed by principal investors designated by the Ministry or Provincial Department of Transport.

- Irregular expenditures include costs with quantifiable volumes and non-recurring nature, such as mechanical channel dredging, repairs of retaining walls and channel control works, costs for purchasing and replacing permanent and semi-permanent signaling systems. Additionally, irregular expenditures include costs for salvaging and clearing natural or unattributable obstacles under riverbeds.

2. Establishing plans for funds for the management and maintenance of inland waterways must be based on:

- The number of routes and lengths of river routes assigned by the Ministry or Provincial Department of Transport to principal investors for management;

- Transportation requirements and technical standards of channels;

- The condition and depth of channels, signaling systems, safety levels for passing vessels, density and types of vessels operating on rivers;

- Standard budgets for regular expenditures for each type of river and budget estimates for irregular expenditures;

- The ability to supply materials and capital from the State budget for the management and repair of inland waterways in the planned year.

3. The capital plan for the management and repair of inland waterways must meet the following requirements:

- It must reflect the spirit of thriftiness, meeting the requirements to ensure transportation safety and convenience, serving the practical needs of safe and convenient travel;

- It must fully and accurately reflect the content of both regular and non-regular expenditures according to each river route with detailed descriptions of each type of work;

- It must calculate and compare the effectiveness of the capital invested with the results of inland waterway transport obtained through the efficient exploitation and utilization of channels.

4. Timeframe for preparing the capital plan for the management and repair of inland waterways:

Annually, in accordance with the State's planning schedule, the project owner agencies (the Association of Inland Waterway Transport Enterprises and local traffic management units) must prepare the management and repair plan for inland waterways in accordance with the requirements and contents stipulated in Points 2 and 3, Section II above to submit to the Ministry of Transport (for rivers under central management) or the Department of Transport (for rivers under local management). The Ministry or Department of Transport will review and approve the management and repair plan for inland waterways based on the construction plan proposals of the project owners and the channel exploitation requirements of the River Transport Associations, Sea-River Transport Associations, and the State's material and financial capabilities. After reviewing, the finance agency records the comprehensive budget expenditure plan for approval by the State. Based on the approved budget expenditure plan for the management and repair of inland waterways, the Ministry or Department of Transport assigns detailed budget targets to the project owners in line with the announced capital plan.

To have a management and repair plan for inland waterways that closely aligns with actual needs, project owners must also develop, allocate, or supplement and adjust plans quarterly and when adjusting plans, in accordance with the timeframes specified in the planning process.

III. CAPITAL DISBURSEMENT FOR THE MANAGEMENT AND REPAIR OF INLAND WATERWAYS

1. Some provisions on the disbursement of capital for the management and repair of inland waterways:

- Capital for the management and repair of inland waterways is covered by the State budget and disbursed twice per quarter by the State Bank based on the approved plan.

- Based on the assigned volume plan, the project owner has the right to enter into economic contracts with inland waterway management enterprises and other units implementing the management and repair plan, strictly supervising the quality of management and repair work and the use of allocated funds to settle completed and accepted volumes.

- The disbursement for settling the volumes of management and repair work must be based on the approved plan according to the economic norms and budgeted unit prices prescribed by the competent authority. The finance agency and the State Bank have the right to refuse disbursement and settlement of expenses exceeding the budget or outside the approved plan targets.

- Regular expenses will be disbursed according to the progress of the plan implementation, while non-regular expenses will be disbursed when there is a need to implement volumes within the plan.

2. Basis and procedure for capital disbursement for the management and repair of inland waterways.

a) Bases for disbursement:

- Volume and value plans (annual, quarterly) reported by the transport authorities to the project owners in line with the budget expenditure plan announcements;

- Comprehensive economic norms and budgeted unit prices related to the management and repair of inland waterways;

- Reports and settlements of the previous period's capital usage.

b) Quarterly disbursement procedure:

- Advance disbursement for Quarter I: Based on the quarterly plan (within the annual plan) and quick reports on the previous quarter's implementation, the finance agency will temporarily disburse two-thirds of the regular budget and half of the non-regular budget to achieve the quarterly plan objectives.

- Disbursement for Quarter II: Based on the quarterly plan, quick reports on the current quarter's implementation, and the previous quarter's capital settlement, the finance agency will continue to disburse the remaining capital according to the progress of completed works.

IV. SETTLEMENT OF CAPITAL FOR THE MANAGEMENT AND REPAIR OF INLAND WATERWAYS

1. Requirements and content of settlement:

- Units receiving capital for the management and repair of inland waterways are responsible for using it for its intended purpose, organizing accounting and timely, accurate settlement with the funding agency as prescribed.

- The settlement content must clearly reflect the management and use of allocated capital and the results of assigned tasks and goals.

- Project owners must clearly explain the implementation process of the assigned plan in terms of physical quantities and values.

- Quarterly and annual settlement reports must follow the unified content and format prescribed for project management boards. The Ministry of Transport will study and prescribe additional necessary forms consistent with the settlement requirements for the capital management and repair plan.

2. Time for submitting quarterly and annual settlement reports:

Settlement at units receiving capital must comply with the prescribed timeframe as follows:

a) For project owners:

The project owner's settlement report sent to the Ministry or Department of Transport must be submitted according to the following schedule:

- Submitting the quarterly settlement report within 15 days after the end of the reporting quarter;

- Submitting the annual settlement report before January 25 of the following year.

b) For transport authorities:

The settlement report of the Ministry or Department of Transport sent to the Ministry or Department of Finance must be submitted according to the following schedule:

- Submitting the quarterly settlement report within 40 days after the end of the previous quarter;

- Submitting the annual settlement report before February 20 of the following year.

V. INSPECTION WORK

To enhance the efficiency of capital use and meet periodic or irregular management requirements, the finance and transport authorities will conduct inspections of the disbursement, management, and use of capital by project owners. If project owners manage and use capital improperly or without economic efficiency, they will be handled according to the current regulations.

VI. IMPLEMENTATION PROVISIONS

This Circular takes effect from the date of issuance and shall apply to units managing and using capital for the maintenance and repair of central and local inland waterways. During implementation, if there are any issues that are not appropriate, units are required to report them to the relevant ministries for review, amendment, and supplementation to be consistent with current state management mechanisms.