Deregulation vital to enhancing business climate

CIEM Director Tran Thi Hong Minh said there were still business requirements which were unnecessary, unreasonable or unfeasible.

Minh pointed out that ministries and agencies made significant efforts to deregulate business conditions from 2017-19, with 50 per cent of prerequisites removed or simplified.

However, more needed to be done to ensure the deregulation progress really benefitted firms, Minh saids.

Head of the CIEM’s Business Climate and Competitiveness Research Department Nguyen Minh Thao said that nearly 40 documents related to removing and simplifying business conditions were issued over the past three years, demonstrating the Government’s determination to create a favourable business environment.

Looking at the results of 2017-19, Thao said the deregulation was mainly in the form of simplification while few prerequisites had been removed completely.

However, Thao said business conditions were still causing a lot of difficulties.

She said ministries had made no reports to evaluate the efficiency and impacts of these reforms.

“The focus should be more on the quality of the deregulation, rather than how many conditions are removed or simplified,” Thao said.

Head of the Legal Department under the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry Dau Anh Tuan said the deregulation of business prerequisites had reached the Government’s goal in terms of quantity but quality remained a big problem.

Tuan said that ministries needed to evaluate the efficiency of reforms in each sector and continue to review and deregulate business prerequisites, together with the establishment of a dialogue mechanism to listen to businesses and adopt solutions to tackle their problems.

CIEM experts agreed that changing the Government’s management mindset was critical.

Businesses should be allowed to operate providing they met the conditions laid out, according to Thao.