On October 10, 2015 in Hanoi, the Deputy Minister of Construction Do Duc Duy presided over the workshop to comment the draft decree on management of construction materials.

This draft has a separate chapter on policy to develop the construction materials directed by resource saving, energy saving and environmentally friendly purposes. This is a completely new content in comparison with Decree 124 promulgated by the Prime Minister, dated July 31st, 2007.

The draft decree on the management of construction materials have been compiled by the drafting committee since early 2015. Through many meetings attended by the Drafting Committees and Editorial Team, with repeated consultations of ministries, sectors, provinces and career associations, upto the present time, the Drafting Committee has developed the 2nd version, including 7 chapters with 48 ​​articles. The draft decree refers to contents of development planning for construction materials; mineral planning as construction materials; capacity and conditions of consultancy companies in the planning and funding for planning work in the field of construction materials; quality control, sales of construction materials; development policy for natural resource saving, energy saving and environmentally friendly; monitoring, inspection and handling the cases of infringement.

Vice Minister Do Duc Duy, the Head of the Drafting committee said: "The Draft contains the innovation compared with Decree 124. If the Decree 124 primarily focuses on adjustment of the planning issues in construction materials and some of the contents related to business management over the production of construction materials, this new draft is to clarify the sequence and procedure. The draft version also envisages the planning of minerals to be used as construction materials under the provisions of the Law on Minerals, so that this source of material is further clearer augmented.

Similarly, the contents on production and trading of construction materials are also augmented. Issues related to management, sales of construction materials are appended with production management, sales of construction materials using white asbestos, in the spirit of the new Investment Law ratified by the National Assembly; the production and trading of white asbestos are regulated under conditional business section. The Government assigned the Ministry of Construction to navigate the study and preparation of documents on standards for white asbestos based products.

The draft is alos further developed with an additional chapter on policy to enable the development of resource- saving construction materials with energy-saving and environmentally friendly purposes. This is something completely new in comparison with Decree 124. In the Chapter, there is also the clarification of development research projects with priority and encouragement given to production investment, and preferential policies to support these types of projects.

Trong Tan