Chairman of the Government Office Mai Tien Dung

At the latest press conference of the Government Office on the program to reduce and simplify regulations related to business activities in the period 2020-2025 according to Resolution 68 of the Government, Chairman of the Government Office Mai Tien Dung said that over the past years, the Government and the Prime Minister have always paid attention to institutional reforms and e-Government development in the operation of State agencies to better serve people and businesses.

In the 2007-2010 period, Vietnam reduced and simplified 4,818 out of 5,421 procedures, equivalent to 37.31%, saving nearly VND30 trillion per year of social costs. The figures were 3,893 out of 6,191 business conditions and 6,776 out of 9,926 line of goods subject to specialized inspection reduced and simplified in 2016-2020, with a total social costs of more than 18 million working days per year, equivalent to about VND6.3 trillion saved.

However, Minister Mai Tien Dung noted that among the current legal documents, there are still many inadequate regulations, which are barriers to production and business. The regulations are still performed manually, which incur unnecessary administrative burdens.

Therefore, on May 12, 2020, the Government issued Resolution No. 68 on the Program to reduce and simplify regulations related to business activities in the period 2020-2025.

The program sets specific goals for the period 2020 - 2025: to reduce and simplify at least 20% of regulations and cut at least 20% of the cost of regulatory compliance related to business operations in documents effective to May 31, 2020; and at the same time, to minimize the number of current documents related to business operations and strictly control the issuance of new documents in order to prevent the emergence of unnecessary, unreasonable, illegal regulations that cause difficulties for businesses and people to do business.

The Chairman of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) Vu Tien Loc said that Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc repeatedly emphasized the important role of institutional improvement. During this term, there have been three waves of reform, Loc said.

Chairman of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry Vu Tien Loc

The first took place in 2016 when thousands of sub-licenses under the Investment Law and Enterprise Law 2014 were removed. The second wave was to review, cut and simplify 50% of business conditions and specialized inspection procedures.

The third wave comes with Resolution 68 that aims to cut business regulations by 20% in five years.

“One term with three waves, the Government has succeeded with promoting institutional reform, in a more methodical way. This is also the first term that the Government has set a target to develop 1 million businesses and to improve the business environment under Resolution 19 and Resolution 02 in a drastic way," Loc said.

According to a VCCI survey, the percentage of businesses that have to apply for a license in business conditions has decreased from 58% to 48%. This is not only a matter of money or time but also a matter of trust. The results show that the trust of the business community has increased.

"I hope that Resolution 68 will promote a new wave of reforms in business regulations, which is very important to the Vietnamese economy," said Loc.

According to the World Bank's global business environment rankings for the 2016-2020 period, Vietnam increased by 20 places, ranking 70/190 countries and economies and 5th in ASEAN.

According to the Global Competitiveness Index 4.0 of the World Economic Forum, Vietnam's competitiveness increased 10 places in the 2018-2019 period, from 77th to 67th out of 141 countries and 7th in ASEAN.

The US News & World magazine ranked Vietnam 8th out of 80 top countries for investment.

Thu Hang