Presenting the proposal on the bill, Minister of Construction Nguyen Thanh Nghi said that the draft law aims to create a legal foundation and a synchronous, comprehensive, unified management tool to adjust urban and rural planning activities, fix relevant problems in reality, meet requirements for the country's new development stage, enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of state management, and ensure the harmony of interests among the State, people and society.
The bill includes adjustments and amendments to a number of existing legal regulations that are no longer suitable to reality, he said.
Particularly, the draft law also consists regulations to increase the decentralisation to People’s Committees of provinces and centrally-run cities during the process of development, verification and approval of general urban planning schemes, said Nghi.
In his verification report, Chairman of the NA's Committee for Economic Affairs Vu Hong Thanh said that the committee agreed on the necessity to promulgae the law, underlining that the consolidation of regulations on urban and rural planning into one law is appropriate, aiming to ensure uniformity in general direction in urban and rural control, management and development as well as the harmony and cohesion between urban and rural spaces, supporting the overall development of localities, regions and the whole country.
Thanh stressed the need for the bill to have suitable and strategic visions in urban planning with respect to market rules and principles of sustainable development, taking people and quality of life as the centre and urban culture and civilisation as the foundation for development, while harmoniously combining the process of urbanisation and urban development with industrialisation, modernisation, new-style rural area building, economic restructuring, social development management, and ensuring national defence and security.
He also reminded the drafting agency to add the assessments of specific impacts of new regulations of the bill, along with the summary on regulations related to decentralisation on local planning adjustments.
Addressing the session, NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue said that the draft Law on Urban and Rural Planning was built on the basis of inheriting, developing and unifying the urban planning regulations in the Urban Planning Law 2009 and regulations on construction planning and rural planning in the Construction Law 2014. In addition, the draft law contributes to concretising the Planning Law and specifying a new issue as well as removing difficulties in implementing related laws.
He said that the bill should review and clarify the issue of climate change adaptation planning, criteria and standards for urban planning associated with population density and infrastructure, as well as planning adjustments to suit the reality.
The NA leader also asked for coherence among the bill and other related laws.
At the session, the Minister of Construction acknowledged all ideas from members of the NA Standing Committee for completing the bill, pledging that the ministry will review and specify all contents and submit a report to the committee soon./.
