Vietnam makes stride in improving business environment, competitive capacity

Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung (Photo: VNA)

In the context of unpredictable and unfavourable changes in the world, especially trade tensions between big economies, Vietnam has been able to maintain reform pace towards a friendly, transparent, low-cost and increasingly convenient for the business community, and for both domestic and foreign investors, which has been recognised by the international community.

“Vietnam’s competitive capacity has seen remarkable improvement in 2019 and recent years, which is the result of the high resolve, drastic efforts and efficient management of the Government in performing the tasks of improving the business environment, reforming administrative procedures, promoting innovation and creativity and adapting to the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung told the Vietnam News Agency.

He said the Government has made important moves, with the most noteworthy ones being Resolution 19/NQ-CP on improving the business environment and enhancing national competitiveness which has been issued annually since 2014, and Resolution 35/NQ-CP issued in 2016 on supporting enterprises’ development to 2020, towards the goal of Vietnam’s business environment catching up with the four leading economies in ASEAN.

In early 2019, the Government adopted Resolution 02/NQ-CP on continuing to implement key tasks and solutions to improve the business environment and enhance national competitiveness in 2019 with orientation to 2021. The resolution’s main targets were to raise the country’s position in international rankings of the WB, WEF, WIPO and the UN.

In the five years (2014-2018) implementing Resolution 19/NQ-CP, Vietnam had 18 reforms recognized, with continuous reforms in tax payment, social insurance, and access to electricity and credit information.

“Institution reform is one of the eight pillars recording positive changes in 2019, with an increase of 0.3 points, improving Vietnam’s position from the previous 94th to 89th. This is an encouraging result of Vietnam’s institutional reform effort,” Minister Dung said.

However, he noted that some other component indices have become bottlenecks, such as budget transparency, corruption and SMEs’ access to credit. Improving those indices requires efforts of not only the Government but also all stakeholders, especially the business community and the people.

“In the time ahead, bettering the business environment and enhancing national competitiveness continue to be one of the key tasks of the Government, with priority given to solutions to create a stable, safe, low-cost and more convenient business environment for enterprises and investors, which allows better resilience in the context of trade tensions in the region and the world,” the Minister of Planning and Investment said.