HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam needs to focus on improving business conditions to ensure deregulation really benefitted businesses, heard a conference held by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) on Thursday in Hà Nội.
CIEM Director Trần Thị Hồng 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 Nguyễn Minh Thảo 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, Thảo said the deregulation was mainly in the form of simplification while few prerequisites had been removed completely.
However, Thảo 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,” Thảo said.
Head of the Legal Department under the Việt Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry Đậu Anh Tuấn said the deregulation of business prerequisites had reached the Government’s goal in terms of quantity but quality remained a big problem.
Tuấn 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 Thảo. — VNS
