After three years of deploying the National Public Administrative Reform Project, commonly called as Project 30 for short, Vietnam has gained significant achievements in public administration reform, according to international experts.
Much progress in administrative procedure reform
Francis Donovan, Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Vietnam, highly appreciated the progress of Project 30. He said that the international community recognised the efforts of the Government of Vietnam to reform administrative procedures in the past three years (2007 - 2010), evidencing that the country compiled and published on websites all necessary administrative procedures. Besides, the national database covers all administrative procedures applied in all four administrative levels with up to 5,400 procedures and over 9,000 legal documents. Many administrative procedures have been simplified by abolishing unnecessary ones as well as modifying incomplete ones.
"People and businesses will easily access and obtain information about administrative procedures and know their rights and obligations to billion complied. They will not have to search complexly or pay cost for intermediaries,” Mr Donovan said.
Besides, he also spoke high of active participation of many economic sectors, particularly private sector, in simplifying administrative procedures. Some 200 private companies provided information and ideas for the Project 30.
The United Nations Organisation of Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) highly appreciated the Project 30, citing that very few countries in the world could launch such a large-scale administrative reform programme like Project 30. Therefore, this is a model of reference for other countries.
The World Bank (WB) placed Vietnam in a group of 10 economies with most improvement in business environment in its Doing Business Report 2010. The progress in public administration reform helped Vietnam move up 10 places in this ranking.
A senior representative from Zamil Steel Group in Vietnam said Project 30 has created a big resonance. Administrative procedure is always a headache problem for State administrators and a high hurdle for investors, especially foreigners. Therefore, the reduction of at least 30 percent of administrative procedures as targeted by the Project 30 is indeed good news for the FDI business community.
Francis Donovan of USAID also applauded the Government of Vietnam for launching the Administrative Procedure Control Agency (APCA) as well as its local subordinates. “The establishment of Administrative Procedure Control Agency represents the seriousness of the Vietnamese Government in further simplifying administrative procedures and improving the business environment as it has committed," he noted.
Helpful advice
The Project 30 reform had significant effect on procedures but enforcement needs to be sped up, the World Economic Forum (WEF) said in its Global Competitiveness Report 2010-2011. Particularly, “administrative procedure burden” stands at the bottom (ranking 120th). Anyway, reform efforts also helped Vietnam increased 16 positions in the ranking in 2009 after many years of relegation.
In a recent interview with the Vietnam Business Forum Magazine, Mr Tsuno Motonori, Chief Representative of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in Vietnam, also offered similar advice. He pointed out that Vietnam needed to try its best to reform administrative procedures, particularly duration of time and cost, as it helped strengthen the confidence of foreign companies when they did business in Vietnam.
In its book "Trade issues and recommendations in 2011” released by the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (EuroCham), the Project 30 was also mentioned. EuroCham said the Project 30 was good although it encountered other procedural obstacles when it was under construction.
Mr Francis A. Donovan recommended that the construction of national database was a huge success of Project 30 but the reduction of procedures also “touched” benefits of many bodies, leading certain hardship in enforcement. "Therefore, the Administrative Procedure Control Agency must have qualified staff to oversee the employment of administrative procedure reform resolutions promulgated by the Government and ensure necessary, lawful, appropriate and effective criteria of new administrative procedures,” Donovan analysed.
In the past three years, the Project 30 built a national database covering all administrative procedures applied in all four administrative levels with up to 5,400 procedures and over 9,000 legal documents, streamlined 10,000 procedures at commune level, reducing district-level administrative procedures from 700 sets to 63 sets, etc.
To date, the Government has completed the Phase 2 of Project 30, approved 25 resolutions for simplification of nearly 5,000 administrative procedures in 24 ministries.
Huong Ly
Vietnamese
