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Many ministries and sectors have been pioneers in reducing and simplifying business conditions and reforming specialized inspection, but few ministries have made little progress. Photo: Thuy Linh.

Not equal in terms of reduction criteria in the same Decree

According to Dr. Vu Tien Loc, it has been nearly 5 years since the first Resolution 19 was issued, and more than two years since Resolution 35 has shown significant results. The business environment has changed dramatically. However, over the time, the performance level among ministries and localities is unequal. Many ministries and sectors have been pioneers in reducing and simplifying business conditions and reforming specialized inspection, but a few ministries have made little progress.

“Therefore, it is very important to have independent assessments, monitoring the implementation of this reduction process. Avoiding chasing of numbers on the report, being optimistic about the achievements that are always emphasized but the people and businesses do not benefit. The most important measure is the satisfaction of the business. More than anyone else, enterprises are the ones who feel most clearly the change of business environment in Vietnam over the past years,” Loc said.

A further analysis of the Report on the Implementation of Resolution No. 19 and Resolution 35 on business environment reform and enterprise development - View from VCCI's business, Mr. Dau Anh Tuan, Head of Legal Department of the VCCI, said the survey shows that the enterprises have found a significant improvement in investment environment recently. However, the level of improvement is unequal among sectors, localities. In the survey of 10,000 private enterprises in different areas of Resolution No. 19, the two best-evaluated sectors were start-ups and electricity access. Meanwhile, the field of import-export procedures, investor protection and corporate bankruptcy are considered as having no significant improvement.

Notably, although most ministries carry out the task and have results in cut-rates, the performances of the reduction in business investment conditions is unequal among the different sectors of the same ministry.

Typically, ministry leaders will ordinarily delegate to the Legislation Department to coordinate with the departments in the ministry to conduct the review. Thus, the role of the Legal Department is very important. But if the Legal Department does not do well, the quality of the documents depends very much on the specialized Departments, which leads to the reduction in formality, unreality, or unevenness in the criteria of reduction in the same Decree.

From a business perspective, the applying for small licenses is common and difficult. According to the PCI 2017 survey, 58% of enterprises responded that they must apply for a conditional businesses. Of these, 42% said they had difficulty in obtaining such permits.

The performance level is unequal among localities

Some provinces and cities are highly appreciated by the business community such as Dong Thap, Da Nang, Binh Dinh, Bac Lieu, Can Tho, Vinh Phuc, An Giang and Long An. In particular, the region with the highest percentage of positive respondents is the Mekong Delta.

According to Mr. Dau Anh Tuan, although there are thousands of specialized inspection procedures for all kinds of goods, as of September, only 68 procedures can be carried out on national portal, and it is expected to have 284 procedures by the year of 2020. Of these 68 procedures, only one procedure (declaration of chemicals) is completely done electronically, for other procedures, enterprises have to submit both electronic and paper files. Thus, the level of reform is very slow.

In the transparency of the examination, inspection, a lot of businesses still complain that there were too many inspections with duplicate content. According to PCI in 2017, the rate of enterprises audited twice or more per year is up to nearly 40%, in which 13% of businesses said there is duplication of content between the inspection teams.

Notably, most of the respondents said they had never met an interdisciplinary team. The authorities still go private, check separately, wasting businesses’ time. Up to 43% of enterprises were inspected for tax, 30% for fire safety and 20% for market management.

There is a remarkable signal that enterprises in some localities have quite good assessment of the transformation of the import-export sector. These are the focal provinces for active import-export activities (large seaports or border gates) and some provinces with many import-export enterprises such as Lang Son, Vinh Phuc, Hai Phong, Da Nang, Binh Dinh, Vung Tau, Binh Duong, Long An...

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Speaking at the seminar, economist Pham Chi Lan said that about 40% is realistic, even lower than the reality.

“Besides, both localities and ministries have responsibilities for business environment reform. The issuance of decrees to reduce business conditions and improve the business environment must be done by ministries because localities have not the authority to do that. If the ministries are not active or we do not have a direct assessment of the ministries, the process will be prolonged. If the ministries do, the localities cannot do,” Ms. Lan said.