Partipants heard this argument and others at anti-corruption conference on Jan. 19 in the capital.
Thestatement was made after the Danish and Swedish embassies and the WorldBank published two reports concerning recognising and reducingcorruption risks in the land management sector in Vietnam.
Directorof the World Bank in Vietnam Victoria Kwakwa said fighting againstland-related corruption, which is considered to be a big challenge forVietnam, will take time and effort.
Surveys conducted in LangSon, Bac Ninh, Binh Dinh and Tien Giang provinces and HCM City showedthat 78 percent of the interviewees believed that corruption occursmostly with land allocation, recovery, compensation and resettlement, ofwhich 38 percent said this type of corruption is very widespread.
About92 percent of the people interviewed agreed that cases involving theillegal sale of land and illegal land allocation happen in everyprovince.
"Unsuitable land compensation, a shortage ofland-related information for the public and the unfriendly attitudes ofofficials may lead to corruption," said Kwakwa.
Prof Dang HungVo, former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, saidthat the land-related procedures, such as the granting of land ownershipcertificates, are rather complicated and time consurming.
This encourages people to choose middleman or spend extra fees to make the process faster and more simple, he said.
Thesurvey said that several ministries and localities have posted legalinformation and procedures on their websites in an effort to promotetransparency, but many 5 thers failed to do so.
At the meeting,representatives agreed that changing land management policies wouldremove the underlying economic interests and make corruption lessprofitable.
Deputy head of the Ministry of Natural Resources andEnvironment's Land Management Directorate Dao Trung Chinh suggestedremoving unnecessary discretion from authorities will help makecorruption more difficult to hide./.