The warping in business law under the changes from Covid-19

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Businesses are still concerned about legal regulations hindering their business operations. Photo: Internet

The Covid-19 pandemic has made the production and business activities of enterprises difficult. Many financial support policies such as tax and fee exemption and reduction; financial obligations exemption and reduction for a number of industries that are heavily affected have been issued. These policies are assessed by businesses as having helped the subjects that need support.

However, the Covid-19 pandemic is still complicated, according to experts, state agencies have had to apply, adjust and change a lot of pandemic prevention and control policies to be appropriate at any given time.

In the context of declining economic growth and increasing vaccine coverage, the Government issued Resolution No. 128/NQ-CP on October 11, 2021, moving to the state of “Safely adapting, flexibly and effectively controlling the Covid-19 pandemic”.

According to Dau Anh Tuan, Head of the Legal Department, Vietnam Confederation of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), the pandemic has caused our country's economic activities to operate in an unprecedented way. The pandemic also pushes businesses to shift to other traditional methods.

Basically, the business legal system regulates economic activities in the normal state. Therefore, when applied to special cases such as a pandemic, there will be a certain "distortion", in many cases there is no regulation, creating a legal gap, and causing many difficulties for businesses.

For example, with the regulation on overtime working hours in the enterprise, according to the provisions of the Labor Code 2019, overtime work does not exceed 200 hours/year, for some specific industries and occupations, it is no more than 300 hours/year, overtime work is strictly controlled to no more than 40 hours/month.

In addition, with the provisions on the extension of the certificate of circulation for drugs and medicinal ingredients, the Law on Pharmacy stipulates that the drug circulation registration certificate is valid for five years from the date of issuance. Upon expiration, the enterprise must renew the license for circulation registration.

A survey by VCCI showed that, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the extension of circulation certificates faced many difficulties because businesses lacked the personnel to prepare documents, due to the requirement of social distancing; many documents in the dossier must be certified and legalized by the consulate in the host country.

Therefore, it is very difficult for enterprises to obtain these types of documents.

Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical law does not have provisions to extend the validity of the certificate of registration of circulation of drugs and medicinal ingredients.

Due to the failure to renew the circulation registration certificate, along with the current situation, many drug factories have stopped production due to blockade and social distancing measures, causing the drug supply chain to be broken because of the shortage of drugs and raw materials for drug production.

In addition, according to businesses, in the context of the pandemic, the business law is lacking many relevant regulations.

For example, the law has not yet provided for the settlement of cases where employees have to work from home. Because when working from home, there are also a number of problems related to policies for employees on occupational safety, occupational hygiene, working hours, and work performance; other agreements in the labor agreement between the employee and the employer.

Therefore, Dau Anh Tuan said that policymakers need to review and develop legislation in the direction that any issue that is only suitable during the pandemic period should have a mechanism to adjust regulations during this time, any issues that need to be adjusted even if everything is back to normal must be amended or replaced.

Worried about cost burden?

Along with concerns about the fact that business laws have not kept up with the situation and economic developments, businesses are still concerned about legal regulations that hinder their activities.

According to Tran Hoang Yen, representative of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), many seafood processing factories have complained of difficulties after inspection and examination by state management agencies in the environment sector when applying National Technical Regulation QCVN 11-MT:2015/BTNMT on aquatic product processing wastewater.

The violations are mainly in the content exceeding the threshold of phosphorus (P), and nitrogen (N). Setting a series of too high standards is making it difficult for seafood businesses to achieve them, affecting not only domestic production activities but also the exports of the whole industry.

Yen said that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has a new draft that will replace both National Technical Regulation 40 (industrial wastewater) and National Technical Regulation 11 (aquatic processing wastewater), putting seafood processing wastewater into the common National Technical Regulation on Industrial Wastewater.

The criteria in this draft are much stricter than National Technical Regulation 11-MT:2015: Phosphorus is only 4-6mg/l, Nitrogen is only 20-40mg/l, ammonium is only 5-10mg/l.

This is causing great concern to the Vietnamese seafood processing and export business community, because this level is not suitable for reality, with the characteristics of the industry and especially with the ability of current wastewater treatment technology.

According to economist Pham Chi Lan, in the current context, the good news is that business law has been able to adapt well. There are many new policies, but this is also an opportunity to review the issued business law, to see if it is still appropriate to learn from experience and make reasonable adjustments.

In addition, in the implementation process, there is always a gap between the regulations and the ability to execute them, between the implementation time and the capacity of the person who implements it.

Therefore, according to Pham Chi Lan, when introduced, policies and regulations on business need to be implemented quickly, with synchronization, predictability as well as accountability to improve the quality of implementation.