A majority of the council's representatives approved a proposal to deal with leased villas in the city although significant portions of it had been rejected in an earlier session and it still attracted severe criticism from several representatives.

Earlier, the capital city People's Committee had proposed to sell 634 villas, 588 of them to residents and the remaining 46 to enterprises who had leased them.

However, the council Wednesday decided the 46 villas will be auctioned or continued to be rented out to the enterprises.

Another 173 villas will remain with the state, based on several criteria, including their location in government office areas in Ba Dinh District, being leased out to government offices, and possessing historical and cultural significance, the committee said.

However, some representatives at the session were still concerned about the decision to sell them.

"We should preserve the villas instead of selling them because selling means damaging cultural values," said the council representative Vu Duc Tan of Ba Dinh District. "Moreover, the city has enough land for construction after former Ha Tay Province has merged into it on August 1."

Representative Tran Trong Hanh, president of Hanoi Architectural University, said it's important to preserve the architectural value of the villas, adding that an authority should be established to preserve them and resettle residents.

On the other hand, many representatives said the preservation of the villas would cost a lot, and some villas had already been partly sold to residents.

Statistics show a total of 970 state-owned villas in Hanoi that have been leased to residents and enterprises or to government offices. A recent study also showed that just 15% of them remained in their original condition, with the rest either rebuilt or deteriorated.

Around 3,900 households with more than 15,000 members are residing in the villas. Forty% of the villas are being hired to between ten or 15 households each, with some being rented out to as many as 50 households each. Some families live in rooms of between ten and 20 square metres.

The People's Council also approved Wednesday a proposal on fixing land prices, which will be implemented next year onwards.

Land prices will range between 2.5 million dong (US$148) and 67.5 million dong (US$4,000) per square metre in central districts, and the highest prices will be 16 million dong (US$945) and 2.25 million dong per square metre in outlying and rural areas respectively.

The highest land price in Ha Dong Town- the central town in former Ha Tay Province that became part of Hanoi in August- will be 15 million dong per square metre.

Vietnam does not technically allow land ownership, but grants land-use rights, which confer the same rights as freehold property.

Thanh Nien News - December 13, 2008