The Capital City of Ha Noi scored over 60 points in PCI rankings for the first time in history in 2016 to rank 14th out of 63 provinces and cities in Viet Nam.

The Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry on March 14 published the Provincial Competitive Index (PCI) 2016 which accesses and ranks the business environment, quality of economic management and administrative reform efforts of all 63 localities.

Especially, the city entered the “good” management group at the 14th place and jumped 10 notches higher than the previous ranking by scoring 62.74 points in 2016.

Earlier, the city had been blamed for its poor performance in PCI rankings for a long time. Hence, the local authorities have spared no effort to improve the situation.

Among ten categories to compose the PCI, Ha Noi was in the top group in terms of labor training, but it lagged behind to the bottom of the ranking on land access and stability in land use. Municipal units were asked to further push up administrative reforms with focus on administrative procedures and the implementation of a one-stop mechanism, to remove difficulties for businesses.

According to the report, in 2016, the city focused on administrative disciplines under the a five-clear spirit of “in person;  in mission, in process; in responsibility; and in efficiency.” The endeavor was initially regarded by the business community.

Especially, time costs and informal charges surged by 0.3 and 0.4 points against the previous rankings.

Specifically, 53% of respondents said that they were not forced to repeatedly apply for signatures and stamps. The figure was remarkably higher than 49% (in 2015) and 38% (in 2014).

Nearly 50% of businesses said that public staffs were more friendly in handling administrative procedures. In 2015, the data was only 36%.

In addition, the number of “popular” situations of business harassment dropped impressively from 78% in 2015 to 69% in 2016.  

Up to 85% of enterprises selected Ha Noi for business opportunities and market scale.  

VCCI Chairman Vu Tien Loc was quoted as saying that the PCI 2016 report was made basing on surveys of 11,600 enterprisesacross Viet Nam including 10,000 individual business households and nearly 1,600 FDI companies in 14 provinces and cities.

According to the PCI research group, the quality of economic management of Vietnamese localities has continued to improve, with positive results being recorded in administrative reform and an increasing number of newly-registered enterprises.

The report calculated ten ranking criteria namely: (1) Entry Cost; (2) Land Access; (3) Transparency; (4) Time Cost; (5)Informal Charges; (6) Policy Bias; (7) Proactivity; (8) Business Support Services; (9) Labor Training; and (10) Legal Institutions.

VGP