Further Accelerating Administrative Reform, Business Support

Placing businesses and people as the center and the driving force for socioeconomic development of the country and facilitating businesses and people to do business, the Government has issued Resolution 68/NQ-CP on reduction and simplification of business regulations for 2020 – 2025 period.

According to economists, this move is to aggressively reduce and immediately simplify unnecessary, unreasonable and unlawful regulations that hamper business operations to enhance public services for business development.

In 2020-2025, Vietnam will reduce and simplify at least 20% of regulations and cut at least 20% of compliance expenses relating to business specified in regulatory documents, effective as of May 31, 2020, counted and announced by relevant agencies prior to October 31, 2020. At the same time, the country will minimize current business regulations under the jurisdiction of ministers, heads of ministerial agencies, the Prime Minister and the Government.

Besides, the Government required that relevant agencies must quantify the reduction and simplification of business regulations as benefits for enterprises, citizens and society, must not adversely affect operations, legitimate rights and interests of enterprises and people; must ensure the goal of state administration and cannot form a loophole in the law. The resolution also stipulates that, by the beginning of June 2020, ministries and branches must complete plans to cut down and simplify business-related regulations within their jurisdiction.

Resolution 68/NQ-CP also states many important solutions. Authorities at all levels direct reduction and simplification of business-related regulations to improve the business investment environment, create all favorable conditions and a fair environment for business operations of enterprises and people.

Other solutions include enhancing communications and dialogues between state agencies with enterprises and people; mobilizing the active participation of the Advisory Council on Administrative Procedure Reform and trade associations to actively reflect, recommend and comment on draft documents and existing documents on the Public Service Portal to increase critics of businesses and people on legal regulations to improve the quality of reviewing, reducing and streamlining business-related regulations.

Additionally, ministries, ministerial agencies and governmental agencies must be directed, inspected and urged to perform assigned tasks to ensure the progress, quality, objectives and requirements of the program. The quality of coordination among ministries, branches and agencies in appraising and verifying legal documents and solving problems and shortcomings must be enhanced.

Moreover, information technology will be applied to review and calculate compliance costs for business-related regulations, integrate reports on reduction and simplification of business-related regulations. It is important to effectively consult enterprises and citizens on legal documents.

Furthermore, it is necessary to promote the effective communication and enforcement of the Government’s Decree 61/2018/ND-CP dated April 23, 2018 on the deployment of single-window mechanism in administrative procedure settlement and Government Decree 45/2020/ND-CP dated April 8, 2020, on implementation of administrative procedures in the electronic environment, connection, integration and provision of online public services and online payment on the National Public Service Portal to serve people and businesses.

The resolution requires heightening the responsibility and competence of authorities, organizations and individuals participating in the program; intensifying monitoring and supervision of media agencies, the press, businesses and people over results of reforming, reducing and simplifying business-related regulations that are no longer appropriate for business activity.

In fact, in recent years, the Government issued resolutions for major tasks and solutions to improve the business environment and enhance national competitiveness (Resolution 19/NQ-CP and Resolution 02/NQ-CP from 2019). In all these resolutions, cutting down on business conditions, specialized inspections and business licenses is also an extremely important content.

Many authorities at all levels have met this requirement well. For example, the Ministry of Planning and Investment simplified five administrative procedures relating to bidding and publicized them on the electronic portal in the first quarter of 2020. The Ministry of Industry and Trade decentralized the power to localities to streamline 152 out of 444 existing administrative procedures (132 administrative procedures at the provincial level; 18 at the district level, and two at the commune level). By the end of April 2020, the Ministry of Finance announced to have abolished dozens of cumbersome administrative procedures and advanced modern technology application to tax administration.

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that a lot of frustrating and unnecessary tools are hindering social development in general and business activity in particular. Therefore, the introduction of Resolution 68/NQ-CP is expected to bring more practical benefits to businesses, enable them to boost business operations and revive the economy when the Covid-19 pandemic has been well controlled in Vietnam.

By Thu Ha, Vietnam Business Forum