Corruption - Among Most Challenging Obstacles to Economic Growth

One of Sweden’s highest priorities in Vietnam is the fight against corruption. It is the lead donor for the Integrity and Transparency in Business Initiative for Vietnam (ITBI). To learn more about this, Vietnam Business Forum interviewed Mrs Anna Rosendahl, First Secretary, Development Cooperation Section, Human Rights/Anti-Corruption, Embassy of Sweden Hanoi, and member of steering committee of ITBI project. Dang Yen reports.

 

All areas and all actors in society are affected by corruption. Even though Vietnam has done very well when it comes to growth and poverty reduction, the corruption remains a challenging obstacle to continued growth and sustainable development. My view is that the corruption today has negative impacts on foreign investments, product quality and competition on the national market – all these factors result in a less competitive business sector in Vietnam.

 

Transparency and integrity are two rather new concepts in the business sector in Vietnam. The most striking difficulty is to mobilize Vietnamese companies in this area and convince them that these are important issues, which in the long run will improve competitiveness, quality of products and the business climate in general. Currently few companies see the benefits of transparency and integrity.

 

The initiative has to work closely with business associations, networks and, not least, enterprises to lobby for transparency and integrity. The initiative should present good models and best practices from both international and domestic companies, to show that there is something to gain from greater integrity and transparency. Lobbying the Vietnamese Government for instruments such as Transparency International’s Integrity Pact and the EITI (Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative) and a number of other very useful tools is also very important. ITBI should also work for streamlined and efficient legislation and regulations to improve transparency and integrity.

 

It’s very good to hear that the Embassy of Sweden Hanoi will be retained, so could you tell us more about the continued support of the Embassy for the ITBI project in particular and the business sector in general?Support for ITBI will continue according to the agreement between VCCI and Sweden, so there is no change.

At this stage we know very little about the Embassy's future activities, since this very positive news reached us only last week. However, we will still promote Swedish and Vietnamese business relations and continue to work for an improved business climate in Vietnam and advocate for important values, such as transparency, integrity and sustainable development. Swedish CENTEC Vietnam is an important project under the Embassy, started in March 2011, which is promoting relations between the two countries within environment and climate change.