VietNamNet Bridge – MONRE’s Minister Nguyen Minh Quang has affirmed that his ministry is not as weak and problematic as people think, even though it got the lowest score in a survey which evaluated the organizations’ effectiveness in developing and implementing business-related legal regulations.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment MONRE earned the lowest score -- 51.37 points out of 100 – in the Ministerial Effectiveness Index (MEI) survey conducted by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry VCCI.

MONRE, together with the Ministry of Transport (52.1 scores), the Ministry of Construction (51.93 scores), and the Ministry of Health (52.22 scores), was in the groups of ministries which have the biggest problems. Meanwhile, other ministries got “average” scores, and no one got “excellent” or “good.”

Commenting about the result, Quang said that this is simply the unilateral opinion from enterprises, and that he does not feel satisfactory with the way of ranking applied by the “jury board.”

Quang said on the sideline of the conference reviewing the works done in 2011 and discussing the implementation of the new tasks in 2012, that carrying out the surveys to find out the effectiveness of the state management agencies’ works is a necessary thing, which serves as a good channel of information for people and businesses to refer to. However, he still can see “problems” in the results.

“We highly appreciate the opinions of businesses. However, it is still necessary to learn about the understanding of businesses about many issues, for example, about the legal documents compiled by the ministry and the way the ministry deals with the problems” he said.

“In fact, there are many complicated procedures, which are not easy to be dealt with. For example, the relations between the ministry and businesses in terms of land, minerals and environment. All the matters can generate influences,” he said.

“With the function of carrying out the state management, the ministry has been implementing its duties prescribed by the laws. We wish to see unprejudiced assessments from the business circle,” he continued.

Quang affirmed that he did not mean that the results were not objective. However, he believes that it would better for VCCI to discuss with MONRE after it collected opinions from businesses and made public the rankings.

“VCCI should have discusses with MONRE. If so, we could have clarified some problems for better understanding,” he said.

Quang admitted he does not “feel at ease” when hearing the news about the ranking.

“The public may think that MONRE has been working very poorly. Meanwhile, this is not true,” he said.

However, in an effort to become better, Quang has requested Deputy Minister Tran Hong Ha and the Legal Department of the ministry to work out with VCCI on the issue.

“We will continue reconsider our works, and if we find mistakes and problems, we will have to fix them. The final goal for us is to better the state management which facilitates the operation of enterprises in accordance with the laws,” he said.

In the talk with the press, Quang said that dealing with the pollution in craft villages and industrial zones will be one of the priority tasks of the ministry in 2012. Vietnam has become “relatively developed country” with the average income of 1000 dollars per capita. For a long time, Vietnam has been focusing on the economic growth, while disregarding the environment protection.

The report of the National Assembly has pointed out that the pollution in craft villages and industrial zones has become very serious. “Our principle is that the licensing to industrial production projects must be associated with the consideration about possible environment impacts,” he said.

Source: Tien phong