On October 9, the Central Law Education and Dissemination Coordination Council organized the 2024 Business and Law Forum with the theme "Joining hands to solve legal issues, contributing to creating a favorable investment and business environment for enterprises".

This discussion session focused on identifying inadequacies, contradictions, and incompatibilities between legal documents on construction investment activities; and obstacles in regulations and implementation which create difficulties for businesses.

Before the session, the organizing board showed reportage on procedures investors have to follow when developing a project using land. The report showed that despite great efforts to perfect policies, many legal problems still exist.

Nguyen Quoc Hiep, chair of the Vietnam Construction Contractor Association, confirmed that the most time and money consuming process is following administrative procedures.

He said he once had to spend 14 years to wait for ‘clean land’ to implement a project and the site clearance process lasted too long. Real estate is also covered by many different laws, which leads to contradictory and overlapped regulations. Legislative and executive agencies have been aware of the problems, and are amending relevant laws to synchronize the legal framework.

Noting that complicated procedures are burdening enterprises, he said site clearance completes only after 177 steps which takes 300 days on average to follow. One of the procedures is lobbying and persuading local individuals and families to leave and make room for project development. Investors are required to have dialogues with households for at least 60 days if they refuse to move

The procedures for project investment are also complicated, requiring 38-40 signatures and stamps and average of 2-3 years, because investors must ask for permission from local management agencies in written documents.

Ha Quang Hung, deputy head of the Department of Housing and Real Estate Market Management, confirmed that some housing projects are covered by 12-15 laws. The project implementation processes varies in different localities which confuses investors.

Le Hoang Chau, chair of the HCM City Real Estate Association, said the amendments in the new Land Law have helped remove obstacles and allowed businesses to access land of different kinds. 

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Planning and Investment has promulgated legal documents to settle existing problems.

Pham Thi Ngoc Thuy, director of the Office of the Private Economic Development Research Board (Board IV) under the Prime Minister’s Administrative Procedure Reform Advisory Council said in the last three review periods, problems in administrative procedures have been cited as the biggest concern, which shows an urgent need for administrative reform.

T. Nhung