In investor-selection bidding, “highest payer” does not mean “winner”: the result is decided by a composite score of three criteria groups, in which — for urban-area projects — land use efficiency carries 40–60% of total points, while capacity and plan carry only 20–30% each. Understanding this weight map decides how an investor allocates dossier-writing resources. This article presents the evaluation frame under Articles 45–49 of Decree No. 115/2024/ND-CP for urban-area and industrial park projects.
1. Overall frame: the score scale and three criteria groups
Decree No. 115/2024/ND-CP (Article 45) provides that bid dossiers are evaluated on a 100- or 1,000-point scale, with the composite score combining three groups: capacity and experience score; investment-business plan score; and efficiency score — land use efficiency for the land project group (Article 4(1): urban areas, housing and similar projects), or sector/field/locality development efficiency for the sector project group (Article 4(2)). Each group’s concrete weight is set by the bidding documents within Article 45’s frames: urban-area projects — capacity and experience 20–30%, investment-business plan 20–30%, land use efficiency 40–60%; sector projects (including industrial park infrastructure projects when put to investor selection) — capacity 30–40%, plan 30–50%, sector development efficiency 10–40%. A special case separated by Article 45 is energy projects, where development efficiency carries 80–90% and the other two groups only 5–10% each — showing the scoring philosophy changes entirely with project nature: urban land scores “how much budget value the land generates”, energy scores “what the project contributes to the sector and locality”.
2. Capacity and experience group: scoring what has been done
Detailed standards in Article 45 of Decree No. 115/2024 cover: financial capacity (equity versus the minimum requirement by project scale, ability to mobilise the remaining capital, financial soundness via audited reports); similar-project experience (number of completed projects of the same type, the capital and area scale of those projects versus the bid project, post-completion operating results); and implementation organisation capacity. For foreign investors, experience points depend on how group experience is bound into the dossier (parent consortium/guarantee) as analysed in the bid-dossier topic — dossiers presenting experience as “evidenced project files” (investment decisions, construction permits, acceptance/hand-over minutes of sample projects) always score higher than self-declared project lists. The capacity group is the hardest to “write well”: it scores real past assets, so the only improvement strategy is bidding-entity structuring and adding consortium partners with complementary experience, decided before the bidding documents open.
3. Plan group and efficiency group: where dossiers are written to win
The investment-business plan group (standards in Articles 47–48 of Decree No. 115/2024) scores: feasibility of total investment and capital structure, implementation schedule, the project’s technical/planning solutions, the business plan and expected socio-economic efficiency (jobs, budget contributions, shared infrastructure for the locality). The land use efficiency group for urban projects (Article 49) scores mainly on the value the investor commits to pay the State budget beyond statutory land financial obligations (land use fee/rent at regulated prices) — the higher the commitment, the higher the efficiency score per the bidding documents’ formula; this is the bidding contest’s only “price” component and usually the deciding group, carrying the largest weight and being the only place investors can continuously raise points through financial commitment. For industrial park projects in the sector group, development efficiency scores contributions such as: committed investment rate per hectare, attracted secondary sectors, occupancy phasing, expected budget contributions and jobs — all these commitments become binding obligations in the post-win project contract, so every number in the dossier must be a number the enterprise can actually perform, not a number to win points.
4. Tie-breaking and post-scoring discipline
Article 45 of Decree No. 115/2024 sets the resolution mechanism where two or more investors share the highest composite score: for land-group projects (urban areas), the investor with the higher land use efficiency score is considered and proposed to win; for most sector projects, higher capacity and experience score is preferred; for energy projects, higher sector development efficiency prevails. After evaluation come approval of investor-selection results, publication of results on the National Bidding Network System (within 05 working days from result approval under Article 29 of Decree No. 115/2024) and project-contract negotiation and finalisation. A point investors must note: at contract signing, if the winning investor no longer meets technical/financial capacity conditions per the bidding documents, the inviter invites the next-ranked investor to negotiate — meaning committed capacity must be “kept intact” from bid closing to signing; any unnotified adverse financial/shareholder change in this interval (capital withdrawal, control change) can forfeit a win earned on points.
Frequently asked questions
Is the budget payment beyond land fees (land use efficiency) just “paying more for land”?
Different in nature: land use fee/land rent is a land financial obligation determined under State land pricing rules after winning; the land use efficiency value is an amount the investor self-offers to pay additionally to the budget as a competitive criterion in the bid dossier. The two amounts combined are the real total “land access” cost of an urban project via bidding — the financial model must count both, and the efficiency commitment becomes a binding obligation at project-contract signing.
Are industrial park projects scored on land use efficiency or sector development efficiency?
Industrial park infrastructure construction projects belong to the sector/field project group (Article 4(2) of Decree No. 115/2024) when put to investor selection, so the score frame is: capacity and experience 30–40%; investment-business plan 30–50%; sector/field/locality development efficiency 10–40% under Article 45(3). The 40–60% land use efficiency frame applies only to the land project group in Article 4(1) — typically urban areas and housing. Each project’s bidding documents set the concrete weights within these frames.
Can a low capacity score be offset by a very high land use efficiency commitment?
Partly: because land use efficiency carries 40–60% of total points in urban projects, an outstanding commitment can overturn a moderate capacity gap. But the dossier must still pass validity and any minimum per-group thresholds in the bidding documents, and higher commitments erode project margin — the optimisation problem is finding the commitment level just sufficient to win with a points safety margin, estimated from rival dossiers, not the maximum committable amount.
Do foreign investors see the detailed scoring criteria before submitting?
Yes — that is bidding’s transparency principle: the bidding documents must publish the evaluation method, detailed standards and score weights within the Decree No. 115/2024 frames, so investors can design their dossiers. If bidding-document content on criteria is unclear, investors may request clarification of the bidding documents within the prescribed period before bid closing; clarification requests and answers run through the National Bidding Network System/the form in the bidding documents.
This article has been quality-reviewed by the FLAW AI Legal Council