The financial sector is steadily reforming

"Taking People and Business Center" is the guideline in the administrative reform of Finance. Photo: H.Vân.

51.35% reduction in business conditions

The most obvious effort by the Finance sector is the drastic implementation of the administrative procedure reform. Many procedures have been eliminated, simplified, reducing implementation time; facilitating people and businesses, and contributing to improving the business environment. From the beginning of 2018, the Ministry of Finance has started to review and evaluate 38 administrative procedures in the field of management in order to propose to competent authorities to consider and decide on the amendment, supplementation and replacement, or for abolishing unnecessary, unreasonable administrative procedures. At the same time, the Ministry of Finance shall review and standardize 960 administrative procedures within their scope of management, removing duplicated administrative documents. To publicize the administrative procedures on the national database on administrative procedures to ensure publicity and transparency, facilitating the people, businesses to look up, monitor and supervise.

Regarding the administrative procedure reform of the financial sector, efforts must be made to cut, reduce and simplify the specialized examination procedures. The Ministry of Finance shall assume the prime responsibility for this, and coordinate with ministries and branches in proposing solutions to reform procedures on import and export goods, thus creating favorable conditions for enterprises to shorten goods clearance time. Along with that, it reviewed the list of business investment conditions in the financial sector as a basis for studying and proposing reductions and simplification options. According to statistics, up to now, 13 ministries have revised and supplemented 80/87 legal documents on management, technology (accounting for 92%), of which 7 have been completed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Ministry of Planning and Investment, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, Ministry of Information and Communication ...

In particular, the Ministry of Finance has carried out a thorough review and evaluation of all investment and business conditions of 21 sectors under its state management. Based on that, proposing a plan to reduce and simplify many business conditions. With a total of 370 conditional initial business conditions, the Ministry of Finance proposed to cut, simplify 190 conditions (cut 92 conditionals, simplify 98 conditions), reaching a rate of 51.35%, according to Request by the Prime Minister.

In May 2018, the PAR Steering Committee of the Government released the PAR Index in 2017 of 19 ministries, ministerial-level agencies and provincial/ municipal People's Committees. The Ministry of Finance ranked third with 84.42%, lower than the second one by less than 2%.

According to Mr. Tran Thanh Ha - Deputy Chief of the Office of the Ministry of Finance, in the past, the Ministry of Finance has attempted to review and cut thousands of administrative procedures, so the procedures do not need to be cut much. However, the Ministry of Finance continues to review and propose a simplification of administrative procedures. For simplicity, cutting down business conditions, Mr. Ha said that the Ministry of Finance has the function of state management in many sensitive and high risk areas, so it is necessary to have conditions for good management. At present, business conditions in the finance sector are quite suitable, so there are no problems or obstacles for the target group. However, the Ministry of Finance will continue to review and propose to reduce and simplify business conditions under management as proposed.

Enhance the responsibility of the heads

There are still a number of significant figures to list, but the reform process in general and PAR in particular is more difficult and not well balanced. As a multi-sectorial management ministry, the scope of management is broad from central to local levels, so PAR in the financial sector is not outside the law.

Recently, in the Instruction 02/CT-BTC on further promoting and improving the quality and efficiency of administrative reform in the field of finance, the Minister of Finance has identified the remaining restrictions. These are: The stability of the system of legal documents on finance is not high; bureaucracy is bulky; the quality of the contingents of civil servants and officials is uneven, as are discipline and administrative discipline in many places. Transformation of public service delivery units is slow... The causes of the above limitations are quite clear, including subjectively and objectively, but one of the main causes is the leaders of units do not attach importance to PAR; the implementation of PAR tasks is lacking in synchronization and comprehensiveness. In coordination with the implementation of the work, there is a lack of connection and mutual support among the units.

Recognizing the shortcomings and causes mentioned above, in Directive 02 sent to all units in the finance sector, the Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung emphasized the goal of meeting the integration requirements. Reform indicators are to reach the benchmark of ASEAN-4 countries and towards OECD standards.

The Minister instructs seven groups with key tasks to be implemented, the most important of which is to strengthen the direction and increase the responsibility of the heads. PAR work must be identified as the key, an ongoing and continuous task for units. The annual results are the basis for evaluating the level of accomplishment of the professional tasks, responsibilities of the civil servants, the leadership capacity of the heads of the units, and is one of the criteria for appointing officials from the assessments by the judges for the awards of titles of emulation and commendations for collectives and individuals.

The work of perfecting financial institutions and policies must be closely linked to the reform tasks in order to bring into play all resources, unleash the production capacity and create a fair and transparent business environment compatible with international practices; Facilitate the people and enterprises at the same time to meet the requirements of state management through coordination mechanisms, inspection, supervision and post-inspection. The reform of the administrative procedures must be carried out by the people and enterprises at the center.

In particular, the Minister noted the research units, proposed solutions to strengthen the organizational structure of the units of the Ministry of Finance to ensure the uniformity in the implementation of functions and tasks in a streamlined direction, ensuring effective and efficient operation. In parallel, it is to build a contingent of civil servants and employees of equal quality, capacity and prestige equal to the duties.

Public finance reform works towards the mobilization and efficient use of resources, contributing to ensuring financial security through further study and improvement of legal normative documents to achieve the public financial reform objectives, allocation and effective use of financial resources associated with the restructuring of the financial system, the implementation of active budget balances to ensure a reasonable cumulative rate of investment for development, ensure safety of public debt.

Last but not least, it is the task of proactive implementation and application of information technology to meet the requirements of the 4.0 Revolution by accelerating the application of information technology in management activities of the units; To focus on the handling of work, the reporting and settlement of administrative procedures in the network environment, thereby improving the efficiency of settling affairs in the operations of the agencies and units under the Ministry.