A law revises many laws: recommendations to supplement and adjust contents

“A law revises many laws” will create more favorable conditions for enterprises’ production and business activities, and promote social-economic development. Photo: HuuLinh.

The bill received supportfrom professionals, businesses, and with the adjustment in the draft, many shortcomings in the process of production and business continue to be proposed toadjust and supplementthe Law.

Prompt progress

According to the contents of the Draft Law amending and supplementing some articles of the Law relating to investment and business being widely consulted, there will be 12 current laws under this “Law revises many laws”. These are: the Investment Law, the Enterprise Law, the Law on Land, Construction Law, Environmental Protection Law, the Law on Fire Prevention and Protection, the Law on Tax Administration, the Law on Corporate Income Tax, the Law on Urban Planning, Advertising Law, the Law onHousing,and the Law on Cinematography.

For the Law on Investment, together with proposing to eliminate 67 careers from the list of 267 conditional careers while adding 14 tothis list, the draft continues to be revised, supplementing 30 points in more than 20 articles of the Law on Investment. The Draft also proposes adjustments and amendments to 22 provisions of the Enterprise Law, 10 provisions of the Law on Land, 11 provisions of Construction Law and a number of articles in the laws relating to other investment and business.

According to the experts, this initiative to improve the business environment by building the Law amending and supplementing the Law on investment and business is very welcome, since it continues the process of removing barriers for enterprises’ businessactivities, and at the same time, showsmany positive points, such as manner, scope, progress as well as determination of the relevant agencies.

Mr. Nguyen Phuong Bac, Director of the Institute for Social - Economic Research and Development, and Vice Chairman of the BacNinh SME Association said that, what enterprises are looking forward is to make administrative and profile proceduresmore favorable and simpler, to shorten processing time, ensuring transparency, to improvebusiness conditions, access to the State’s resources to be more facilitating and equal, avoiding authoritarianismand inequality stemmingfromnepotism and favoritismetc. The problem is that the revised laws amending and supplementing some articles of the Law relating to investment and business include all of the three large issues such as business conditions, administrative procedures and access to resources (land, mineralsetc), so that the Law amending and supplementing some articles of the Law relating to investment and business is very important.

On overall assessment of the draft law, Mr. Nguyen Phuong Bac said that the initiative to develop the law met enterprises’ expectations, since it gathered together the most recognizable and common difficulties of the business environment, the law building process is urgent and there are many points that were not absorbed in the previous building process, but now are considered in the revision. However, according to Mr. Nguyen Phuong Bac, from the point of view of procedure, there are many issues yet to be resolved. For example, the sequence and procedures of conditionsfor transfer, capital contribution, leasing of agricultural land use rights to carry out production investment projects or non-agricultural business,are not clear. Article 193 in the Law of Land regulates to require permission from competent authorities, but who are the competent authorities, and when to ask for permission has not been clearly defined.

Many shortcomings need to be amended

Besides the amendments and supplements proposed by the authorities in the draft, experts and enterprises keep proposing recommendations to revise the shortcomings and difficulties in practical investment and businessactivities.

Specifically, in the draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law relating to investment and business, there are 10 provisions of the Land Law proposed to revise. Comments on the shortcoming in the process of implementing the Land Law relate to issues of land use fees as stipulated in Article 107 of the Land Law, a representative of the HCMC Real Estate Association proposed toreplace the “land use fees” institution by a tax type like “Tax on changing the purpose from agricultural land to residential land” to ensure transparency and eliminate the “ask-give” mechanism.

Explaining this proposal, Mr. Le Hoang Chau, Chairman of the HCMC Real Estate Association said, presently, although land use fees are neither a tax nor a charge (not being regulated by the Law of Taxes, Fees or Charges), but is a huge budget revenue item of local authorities according to the regulations of the Land Law and the Law on the State Budget. Under the current fees collectionmethod, the land use fee is a “cost burden” that enterprises and consumers must “bear” when buying homes, an “unknown” without transparency that investors cannot calculate before deciding to invest and this is also an environment to create the “ask-give” mechanism. According to Mr. Le Hoang Chau, to make the real estate market operate according to the market mechanism, in the medium and long term, there is a need to change the land use fee regulations, it should be seen as a tax with a certain tax rate, around 10% or 15% of the land price list as proposed by the HCMC People’s Committee. This is to ensure transparency, easy to calculate, eliminating the “ask-give” mechanism, minimize extraland use fees collection atandmaintain sustainable and stable revenue for the State.

Apart from the 12 Lawsthat are being researched to revise urgently, the HCMC Real Estate Association proposed to add 2 Laws including the Law on Real Estate Business and the Law on Procurement with manyprovisions that need to be revised in the list of the amended and supplemented Lawat this time.

According to the list of agendas, the economic restructuring Plan project for 2016-2020, the draft Law amending and supplementing a number articles of the Laws relating to investment and business, will be submitted to the National Assembly in 2016. According to experts, to improve quality, in the next time, we need to build the Law amending and supplementing some articles relating to investment and business under the perspective of enterprises and people who implement these laws to detect additional amendments and supplements, and also to review the relevant decrees since as provisions from the decrees which remainproblematic and create difficulties for enterprises.

Based on formal assessments between the Law on Enterprises and the Law on Intellectual Property, Mr. TranManh Hung, from the BMVN International Law Firm Ltd., proposed to amend the Law on Enterprises relating to the issue of enterprises’ names that infringe industrial ownership rights. According to Mr. Hung, although regulations related to handling the infringement of industrial ownership rights have issues, Article 39 of the Law on Enterprises onprohibitions on naming enterprises completely without any provision for prohibitions in naming enterprises that infringe the industrial ownership rights. “We propose additional regulations to prohibit naming enterprises that infringe the industrial ownership rights in the Article of the Law on Enterprises, accordingly, regulate to “revoke the registration licenses of enterprises in case their names infringe the industrial ownership rights”, at the same time propose supplementing Article 211 of the Law on Enterprise for revocation of the enterprises’ registration licenses in case their names infringe the industrial ownership rights but do not perform the name changing procedures as notified by the business registration agencies”, Mr. Tran Manh Hung recommended.