A government can regulate better without regulating more. For Vietnam, that principle could be central to building a more stable, predictable and business-friendly institutional framework.
Permanent Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Tuc recently called for a review of regulations on safe following distances on expressways and the related penalties. The issue began with traffic rules, but it raises a larger question: how regulations are made and how they work in real life.
Vietnam is amending a very large body of laws. That is necessary, but the number of laws amended is not the ultimate measure of institutional reform. Photo: Dinh Hieu.
A sound objective does not necessarily mean the approach is right. Safe following distances are intended to reduce accidents, but if a regulation is out of touch with reality or difficult to comply with, it needs to be reconsidered. Ultimately, laws must be tested against real life.
And this is not just a traffic issue. Quite a few regulations have had to be clarified, extended, amended or even suspended shortly after being introduced. If this keeps happening across different sectors, the question is no longer about individual legal documents, but about the way we make policy itself.
Where did the lessons from Decree 15 go?
Decree 15/2018 on food safety showed that Vietnam was once capable of carrying out such a reform. It marked a major shift from pre-inspection to post-inspection, allowing businesses to self-declare and take responsibility for their products while enabling regulators to focus on areas of higher risk.
According to assessments published at the time, more than 90% of administrative costs were eliminated, saving around 10 million working days and VND3.7 trillion ($141 million).
But the most important lesson from Decree 15 is not the VND3.7 trillion that was saved. It is that the State can regulate better without necessarily regulating more.
Yet in 2026, Decree 46 was issued to replace Decree 15, causing congestion at seaports and border gates. The Government subsequently had to suspend Decree 46 and continue applying Decree 15 while the new regulations were being revised.
A reform mechanism that had been operating for years was replaced; the new mechanism ran into problems, and the old one had to be brought back.
So where did the lessons from Decree 15 go?
“Institutional memory”
A successful reform must become part of the institutional experience of the entire system. It cannot remain only in the minds of a handful of officials or in review reports.
Vietnam has gone through periods of very strong business environment reform. But having individuals who are good at reform is not the same as having an administration that knows how to reform.
If experience is not embedded in the way the system operates, it can disappear when the people involved change. Reforms that appeared to have been completed may have to be undertaken again a few years later, or we may even return to management approaches that we ourselves had previously found ineffective.
That is a form of lost “institutional memory.”
What has proven effective should become the benchmark. If a drafting agency wants to replace it with a new mechanism, it should have to demonstrate that the new approach will regulate better, cost less or solve problems the existing mechanism cannot address.
Those who want to raise costs should have to prove the case
If an agency removes a procedure and an incident later occurs, the question is often immediate: Why did you not regulate it?
But if that same agency introduces a new procedure that forces hundreds of thousands of businesses to spend more time and money, very few people ask the reverse question: Why are you making all of them do this?
For regulators, adding a procedure is often safer than removing one. But the price of that safety is largely paid by society.
General Secretary and President To Lam has repeatedly emphasized the need to rethink the formulation and enforcement of laws, shifting from a regulatory mindset toward one that enables development, reducing compliance costs, ensuring policies are stable and predictable, and abandoning the thinking that “if you cannot manage it, ban it.”
The question is whether that spirit can make its way into every law, decree and circular.
In my view, before imposing another obligation on citizens or businesses, the drafting agency should be able to answer three questions: Does the State really need to intervene? Is there a less costly way to achieve the same objective? And how much will society have to pay for that intervention?
It is not as though Vietnam has never had tools for this. The country has adopted Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) and the Standard Cost Model.
RIA requires policymakers to examine potential impacts before a regulation is issued, while the Standard Cost Model helps quantify the burden that administrative procedures impose on citizens and businesses.
But these tools are meaningful only if their findings can actually change policy. If an impact assessment is conducted merely to complete the paperwork while the regulatory approach has already been decided, RIA can easily become just another procedure embedded in the very process that creates procedures.
The principle should be very clear: Any agency seeking to increase compliance costs must demonstrate that the additional social benefits outweigh the costs the regulation imposes on society. If it cannot prove that, the regulation should not be issued.
Accountability must also work both ways. If removing a regulation causes harmful consequences, those responsible should be held accountable. But those who impose an additional regulation that creates unnecessary costs for society should also be held accountable.
If accountability exists on only one side, the safer choice for regulators will continue to be more regulation.
A breakthrough in process and mindset
Vietnam is amending a very large body of laws. That is necessary, but the number of laws amended is not the ultimate measure of institutional reform.
For citizens and businesses, good institutions must also be stable, easy to understand and predictable. If a legal document has barely taken effect before preparations begin to amend it, social costs can still rise no matter how many laws are revised.
That is why an institutional breakthrough sometimes means not issuing more rules, but having the courage to remove them: not forcing one million people to complete a procedure simply to manage a few thousand, or even just a few, potentially risky cases; not replacing a mechanism that is working well without first proving that the new one is better; and, when a newly introduced regulation proves incompatible with real life, having the courage to amend it immediately.
The Permanent Deputy Prime Minister’s request for a review of safe following-distance regulations on expressways is the right thing to do. Any regulation that does not fit real-world conditions should be amended, even if it has only recently been introduced.
But if newly issued regulations repeatedly have to be amended, we cannot continue fixing each document one by one. More importantly, we must change the way those documents are made in the first place.
Before adding another regulation, ask one question: Is there a way to regulate better while costing citizens and businesses less?
On September 1, 2026, the Government Office sent an official dispatch to the Minister of Public Security, the Minister of Construction and chairpersons of provincial and municipal People’s Committees conveying instructions from Permanent Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Tuc on ensuring traffic safety and enforcing penalties for road traffic violations.
According to the document, on August 28 and 29, the media carried numerous reports on “traffic violations and accidents on the first day of the September 2 National Day holiday and the enforcement of penalties for violations of safe following-distance requirements for vehicles traveling behind another vehicle on expressways.”
In response, the Permanent Deputy Prime Minister instructed the Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Construction, provincial and municipal People’s Committees and other relevant agencies to urgently review and address the issues raised by the media within their authority, or submit matters beyond their jurisdiction to the competent authorities, with the aim of reducing congestion and maintaining traffic order and safety, particularly in major cities and urban areas.
The Minister of Construction was instructed to coordinate with the Ministry of Public Security, other ministries, local authorities and media agencies to strengthen public communication on Circular 38/2024, which regulates speeds and safe following distances for motor vehicles and specialized vehicles on roads, and Government Decree 168/2024/ND-CP, which sets administrative penalties for road traffic order and safety violations as well as rules on deducting and restoring driving-license points.
The Ministry of Construction was also instructed to coordinate with the Ministry of Public Security and relevant agencies to thoroughly review and assess existing regulations on safe following distances and penalties, real-world conditions and fundamental measures to ensure traffic safety, and to report matters beyond their authority to the Prime Minister in September.
Vietnamnet.vn
Podcast
.svg){kind=icon}
