The transportation business conditions: Not just simplify but must cut off

Many business conditions at the Circulars can be removed immediately by the Ministry of Transport. Photo: collected.

The transport enterprises are also agreeing and looking forward to reducing the business conditions in this area. However, in the opinion of many experts, the simplification had not just been in essence but only "from one status to another".

Good pre-inspection but “dodge” the post- inspection

According to Ms. Trinh Thi Hang Nga, Director General of Legal Department, Ministry of Transportation, the transportation sector in general included a total of 570 business conditions, belonging to 28 conditional business lines under the Investment Law. Next time, 314/500 business conditions and regulations related to the Transport sector should be reduced and simplified. In particular, the maritime sector proposed 109/189 business conditions (accounting for 57.6%), the multi-modal transportation services and the dangerous goods transportation had 15/31 business conditions (48.3%), the railway sector had 17/26 business conditions (65.3%), the waterway had 37/49 business conditions (75.5%) and the airlines had 53/78 business conditions (67, 9%). Particularly in the field of road traffic, there were 127 business conditions for the conditional business lines. It is expected that the Ministry of Transport would review, reduce, and simplify 83 business conditions, accounting for 66.35% of the total current regulations.

Agreeing with Ms. Nga’s point of view Mr. Nguyen Van Thanh, Chairman of the Vietnam Automobile Transport Association, said that there were still unreasonable conditions and procedures that create the burden and the unnecessary costs for the enterprises. Therefore, the review to amend and reduce the unreasonable business conditions should be carried out in the direction of the radical removal of the “ask and give” mechanism, limiting the pre-inspection regulations to move to build the post-inspection regulations that would be more effective and would avoid the enterprises suffering losses due to policy. "Because the enterprises have spent 130 billion to buy the cars but have to 'cover up' to wait for the approval procedures of the State agencies to enter the lines. In the case of contractual vehicles, the regulations require to integrate the data and be sent to the provincial Transport Departments before implementation. Therefore, I hope that the draft Decree 86/2014/ND-CP will solve the problems of business registration, registration in the line, landing, yards...” Mr. Thanh stressed.

From the perspective of a business directly involved in transport services, Mr. Nguyen Manh Ha, Chairman of the Board, Director of the Dutch Trade and Tourism Joint Stock Company, said that many businesses met the “pre-inspection” conditions very well, but had looked for many ways to ‘dodge” the law in the process of operation. Specifically, the enterprises registering the business passenger cars running fixed routes to abandon to run under the contracts, or in contrast, the contracted cars run the fixed routes...

Still heavy impositions

Commenting on the abolition of some business conditions in the transport sector, Mr. Phan Duc Hieu, Deputy Director of the Central Research Institute for Economic Management, suggested the Ministry of Transport should reduce, abolished drastically, because only completely abandoning business conditions would reduce the burden on the enterprises.

Agreeing with Mr. Hieu’s view, Chairman of the Hanoi Taxi Association Nguyen Cong Hung also said that many business conditions at the level of the Circular could be removed immediately by the Ministry of Transport. “For example, the regulation of motor vehicle inspection cycle should be 24 months instead of 12 months as today to save the enterprises’ costs. Each verification vehicle must stop 40 minutes; when hundreds of vehicles are registered at the same time, the cost of money, time would be great. In addition, the regulations on taxi meter verification, although the State had controlled strictly the quality, but still force the enterprises to verify once a year, it was a great waste. These regulations could be abolished”, Mr. Hung suggested.

One of the inadequacies of business conditions in the transport sector was pointed out by Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tung, Chairman of the Board of Directors and General Director of Thien Thao Nguyen Co., Ltd. as in Item 4, Article 15 Decree No. 86/2014/ND-CP on the business conditions of passenger transportation along fixed routes, it stipulated that the enterprises or cooperatives engaged in passenger transport on fixed routes of 300km or more must have 20 vehicles and more for the units headquartered in cities directly under the Central Government; 10 vehicles or more for the units headquartered in the remaining localities, and 5 vehicles or more for the units headquartered in the poor districts according to the Government's regulations.

"However, according to the statistics, the number of transportation business units in the country with 5 vehicles or less was 17,799/24,580 units, accounting for 72.4% of the total transport business units. Thus, if it is to comply strictly with Decree 86, most transport units will stop operating because they do not meet the regulations on scale. Therefore, this regulation should be abolished, instead, it should be stipulated in the direction that the transport business enterprises must ensure the quantity, quality and expiry date of the vehicles depending on the type of business and scale of the enterprises”. Mr. Tung suggested.