The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the Restructuring for a More Competitive Vietnam (RCV) Project recently organised a workshop in Hanoi to start a campaign to collect business opinions on the best and worst laws in Vietnam.
VCCI President Vu Tien Loc said this is the first time the poll on best and worst laws is carried out. “The poll will be like Oscar and Golden Raspberry Awards in the movie industry, as it aims to find out the best and worst legal regulations to enhance the quality of reform,” he added.
Dr Loc said, in this poll, all individuals, organisations and agencies have the right to nominate and vote for official regulations relating to enterprises and business operations issued from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2015.
Hence, the poll results will help improve law assessment criteria to order to change and improve the quality of legislations on business like reducing compliance costs, removing obstacles to market entry, minimising corruption and upholding non-discrimination.
Ten criteria for determining best and worst regulations are necessity, rationality, consistency, feasibility, transparency, compliance costs, freedom of business, competitive environment, harassment risk control and time of enforcement. The nomination will be closed on January 22, 2016 and the voting round will start on March 11, 2016. The final result of best policies and worst policies will be announced in late April 2016.
Mr Dau Anh Tuan, Director of Legal Department under VCCI, said the poll results figure out 10 best regulations and 10 worst regulations concerning business climate. Voting results are the recognition of the business community to the efforts of State authorities. If their regulations make the investment environment more favourable, they are good ones. The voting will also send warnings to regulations that unreasonably hinder production and business operations.
"This will be a suggestion for State agencies to reconsider regulations and conduct a review and assessment to amend and supplement contents to fit the reality and define criteria to make effective regulations,” he added.
Giving evidence to bad regulations, Mr Tuan cited that Decree 60/2014/ND-CP provides a lot of regulations very hard for businesses to abide. For instant, the head of printing unit must have a college degree or higher specialised in printing. In fact, a doctoral leader still leads a small loss-making printing company to loss while a leader without any degree of specialisation still runs big companies by revenue. To facilitate businesses, the ministry annulled regulations on qualifications and instead required a 3-day short-term training course on specialisation, costing VND5 million.
Circular 47/2011/TT-BTNMT provides that wastewater from animal husbandry must meet Class A standards, which are drinkable water. Regarding this requirement, Tuan said many companies spend a lot of money but still struggle with wastewater quality regulations. This requirement is even 6-7 times higher than that in Japan and Thailand.”
One of the worst provisions nominated are restrictions on the import of used machinery and equipment specified in Circular 20/2014/TT-BKHCN. Facing controversies from the business community, the rule was terminated right before the pre-set date of enforcement.
Good regulations include the removal of upper limit on marketing and promotion expenses specified in the Law 71 on tax laws; regulations on the list of conditional businesses; regulations on legal representative in limited liability company and joint stock company; or the reduction of corporate income tax from 25 per cent to 20 per cent.
Quynh Chi
Vietnamese
