The workshop on assessing the quality of business conditions held by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) on November 14 in Hanoi shows that simplification of business conditions has obtained positive but insubstantial achievements.
According to Mr Phan Duc Hieu, Deputy President of CIEM, among 5,000 business conditions in 400 documents that need to be reduced or amended, 542 conditions have been amended, 771 removed, 111 replaced but 29 new conditions arisen.
Fake actions
According to CIEM, only about 30 per cent of business conditions has been cut. The CIEM's research also indicates that some ministries have not implemented this policy very well. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has the lowest results with 80 conditions removed, the Ministry of Construction with 158 conditions removed, and the Ministry of Culture & Information with 61 conditions removed.
However, there are still some reductions in business conditions which do not bring about positive impacts. The fact shows that few of modified conditions make big impacts while the rest has moderate or even weak effects.
The most worrying thing is that new business conditions under Decree 49/2018/ND-CP in education with poor quality caused difficulties for businesses. Accordingly, the conditions for the issuance of a certificate of qualification for education quality accreditation must be stable for two years and have enough room for auditors with an area of at least 8 m2 per person and at least 10 full time staffs.
Besides, there are shortcomings such as chaos in the old and new conditions, inconsistent amendment, and complicated new issuances of documents. "This situation shows that the monitoring of business conditions is not easy," said Mr Phan Duc Hieu.
It is necessary to separate objectives of reducing from those of simplifying business conditions
Although the number of business conditions has decreased and many steps have been carried out smoothly on the basis of application of information technology. However, at the final stage when the businesses have direct contacts with public employees, many companies reflect the cost of "lubrication", even with higher levels than before.
Mr Dau Anh Tuan, Director of Legal Department, VCCI said that it is necessary to separate reduction targets from objectives of business conditions simplification. At present, most of the agencies are still heavy on the goal of simplifying business conditions or simply cutting off the words that have been simplified.
The business reform is a work that needs to be done continuously and consistently to bring a healthy impact for businesses. From the situation of cutting business conditions, Mr Tuan proposed business conditions procedures that control the new documents. Besides, an independent monitoring unit should be founded to inspect the business conditions process. Besides, the government should build a standardised division of business conditions
Nguyen Thanh
Vietnamese
