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Mr. Tran Xuan Long, the Deputy Director of Department of Legal Affairs, the Ministry of Finance .

Can you tell us about the specific results of the PAR Index 2015 of the Ministry of Finance?

As announced by the Interior Ministry, the PAR Index 2015 of the Ministry of Finance reached 89.21% and was ranked the 2nd among 19 ministries and central agencies. This is a rather high index and just below the 1st unit by 0.21%.

Moreover, other indexes of the Ministry of Finance are quite optimistic. Specifically, the PAR Steering Index reached 99.13%; the Construction and institutional implementation Index reached 86.85%; the Administrative Procedure Reform reached 91.71%; the Organizational Reform of the State Administrative Apparatus Index reached 97.68%; the Building and Improvement of the Quality of Civil Servants Index reached 67.39%; the Financial Innovation for Administrative Agencies and Public Service Units Index reached 96.48%; and the Modernization Index reached 90.86%.

So, what do you think about the results of the PAR Index of the Ministry of Finance this year?

Regarding the PAR Index in the last 4 years of the 19 ministries, we can see that the Ministry of Finance’s ranking has improved tremendously. Specifically, the Ministry of Finance stood at No.8 in 2012, at No. 4 in 2013 and at No.2 in 2014 and 2015.

The ranking is an assessment but for me the specific indexes are the most important things to demonstrate the reform efforts of the Ministry of Finance. It can be seen that the Ministry of Finance’s index has continued to increase over 4 years. The index of 2015 was 12.18% higher than that of 2012, an increase of 7.67% compared to that of 2014.

The increase of the PAR index has shown that the public administration reform of the Ministry of Finance has been implemented well, supporting and creating favorable conditions for production and business activities of citizens and businesses. It also reflects the efforts of the Ministry of Finance in general and the units in the Finance sector in particular, especially in the current context of higher level of all the PAR ministries index with an average of 85.3 %.

Reportedly, in the structure of the PAR Index, the Sociological Index plays a high percentage. Due to operations of the Ministry of Finance directly dealing with people and many businesses, is this a disadvantage, sir?

In fact, the Ministry of Finance is a multi-disciplinary agency with many sensitive areas, which leads to the multiple reflection of people and businesses. However, the Sociological Index of the Ministry of Finance in the past 4 years has always stood at the "top" of the list. This result means that the operations of the financial reform has really come into effect and got positive feedback from the society.

In comparison, at present, the Sociological Index of the Ministry of Finance is still much higher than other ministries indirectly dealing with people and businesses. I think this is a very encouraging result.

In your opinion, what are the main reasons of the success of the Ministry of Finance’s public administration reform, which includes a high ranking and the optimistic PAR index?

These results derives from the drastic directions and measures of the leaders of the Ministry of Finance, especially the Minister of Finance. In particular, the Ministry of Finance considered the public administration reform as key tasks. Every month, the Ministry of Finance holds meetings for summarizing and evaluating the results of implementation of the public administration reform, associating the responsibility of the leaders of units with the ranking; and carrying out promulgation of the plans of the Government Resolution, etc. In addition, the units under the Ministry of Finance have seriously implemented administrative reform plans in a timely fashion according to the scheme.

The Ministry of Finance also fully implements the monthly and quarterly reports as well as recommendations to the Government and the PAR Steering Committee to promptly resolve the difficulties and problems.

Every year, the Ministry of Finance also provides the PAR inspection on a number of units and offices in the Customs, the Taxation and the local Treasuries to update the information and actual operations, thereby, encouraging good examples and rectifying the shortcomings and limitations.

In particular, the Ministry of Finance has implemented Directive Plan No. 13 / CT-TTg of the Prime Minister on strengthening the responsibility of the head of the State administrative agencies at all levels in the operations of administrative procedure reform. In particular, associating the responsibility of all the leaders and civil servants with implementation of the public administration reform through annual emulation and commendation.

In the near future, what are the solutions of the Ministry of Finance to maintain a high index ranking in public administration reform, Sir?

After the Interior Ministry announced the PAR Index, the Department of Legal Affairs reviewed the achieved scores and the deducted scores to seek for subjective and objective reason, and then proposed solutions to increase the index next year.

Similarly, this year, we are also drafting a report to assess the above content, issuing with a number of specific measures such as recommendations to the Government Inspectorate to carry out the inspection plans before November 25, 2016; noting the units to provide sufficient documentation to verify the reports to the Grading Council of Government; early proposals to the Interior Ministry to approve the project of building working places, which reduces the deducted scores.

After the leaders of the Ministry of Finance approve this report, we will publicize for the units in the Finance sector to update and implement as scheme.

In order to implement the public administration reform effectively to each units, in 2015, the Ministry of Finance issued Decision No. 793 / QD-BTC approving the set of indexes to evaluate and assess the operations of public administration reform of each units. Thus, the set of indexes is considered to be the criteria of each units to improve the quality of public administration reform activities.

Through the quantification and grading of compliance with the criteria, the set of indexes issued by the Ministry of Finance will be the tool to assess the results of implementation of the public administration index in each unit, as well as raising awareness of administrative procedures and seeking solutions to reduce administrative procedures in the field of State management.

Early in 2017, the set of indexes will be published for the first time, thereby contributing to strengthening the public administration reform in the Finance sector.

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Thank you!