New law for business in pipeline

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Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung told Dau Tu (Vietnam Investment Review) that a new law regulating future revision of the enterprise and investment laws is expected to be presented to the National Assembly in October.

“The goal is to create a good legal system to boost business development and attract new investment flows,” he said.

Experts have recently expressed doubts about the quality of the new decrees, which might have been drafted too hastily as ministries rushed to complete them by the target date.

Hanosimex Ha Dong Textile factory at Ha Nam Province’s Dong Van 2 industrial zone

With regard to this matter, the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) Deputy Director Phan Duc Hieu said: “They should not be overly doubtful.”

Hieu said the ministries compiled the documents based on more than 300 suggestions by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), which represents the domestic business community, and nearly 70 suggestions by the CIEM, an agency advising the Government on economic management policies.

Hieu said yesterday was not the “dead-end” of the Vietnamese business conditions reform.

“The last legal reviewing period can be considered a practise step for ministries and sectors for a much greater task, required by the Investment Law, to abolish or supplement certain business conditions annually," he said.

The latest enterprise and investment laws and some 50 new decrees providing guidelines for their implementation took effect on July 1, making about 3,000 business conditions previously stipulated in ministry circulars null and void.

Industry insiders said it will take time to assess exactly how the new decrees change the business environment, and Minister Dung said legal revisions will go on.

Dau Anh Tuan, head of the VCCI’s legislation department, said the ending of many unnecessary business conditions will bring about big changes in the rights of enterprises and people in doing business.

For example, elimination of requirement regarding office space, number of employees or the contents of equipment will foster equality and competition in the market and remove obstacles to the creativeness of enterprises – a factor influencing their product quality and prices, Tuan said.

Fewer unnecessary conditions also means less chance for State management agencies to burden companies with business licencing and certifying processes, he said.

CIEM Director Nguyen Dinh Cung said that by erasing the unnecessary business conditions, ministries and sectors have shown a change in their thinking.

“Civil servants are aware that they cannot sit in air-conditioned rooms to ‘give birth’ to business conditions. They understand that they must work out regulations and standards based on production processes of companies and sectors,” he told Dau Tu.

VCCI Chairman Vu Tien Loc said the Government now mainly supervises enterprises in post-licensing phases, instead of controlling their establishment with conditions set in advance.

“This creates conditions for enterprises to mature in terms responsibility and business culture,” he said.