Vietnam's premier to meet government officials and businesses

By VnExpress   March 7, 2017 | 11:48 pm PT
Vietnam's premier to meet government officials and businesses
Members of VCCI discuss their concerns in Hanoi on Monday. Photo courtesy of VCCI
All business concerns are gathered and reported to the Prime Minister each month, VCCI says. The government will host a conference reviewing a year of implementing Resolution No. 35.

The Vietnamese government issued Resolution No. 19 in April last year on improving domestic business environment and enhancing national competitiveness. In May it issued Resolution No. 35 on supporting and developing enterprises.

After a year implementing the policies, while the government has taken it seriously, some ministries and provinces have failed to apply Resolution No. 35. The government said it will soon organize preliminary review of the implementation of the resolution, whereby Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc will listen to opinions raised by ministries and agencies as well as business executives.

Resolution No.19 can be considered part of Resolution No.35 as it is mainly about enhancing business climate, while the latter provided measures for supporting and developing corporate performance, said Vu Tien Loc, President of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI).

The implementation of Resolution No.35 had significantly reduced administrative procedures, including shifting from pre-inspection to post-inspection, cutting down the number of business conditions and time for inspection while restricting corruption.

In addition, each government agency has a representative to be in charge of a task so overlapping can be avoided.

The resolution vows to create favorable and safer business climate. On the other hand, the business community should join the government’s effort by developing effective business, building corporate culture and getting more involved in social responsibility.

On Monday, VCCI hosted a conference to gather concerns from enterprises and report to Prime Minister Phuc.

Sublicenses, a lack of access to funding and high labor cost are making it hard for companies to perform well in Vietnam, representatives from business associations and companies in northern Vietnam told the conference where they also discussed business in the past year.

Vietnam has been trying hard to get rid of sub-licenses which set unreasonable requirements on many different business fields since April last year, but “the fight to eliminate sublicenses is seeing no ending," said Loc.

"If successful, it will be much easier for companies to do business in Vietnam,” he told the conference.

Loc was addressing concern raised by a representative from the American Chamber of Commerce, who said many American companies doing business in Vietnam too many sub-licenses. 

“It’s time and money consuming and also complicated for companies to collect all required sub-licenses before they can sell the product out to the market,” the representative said.

vietnams-premier-to-meet-government-officials-and-businesses

On Monday, VCCI hosted a conference to gather concerns from enterprises and report to Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc. Photo courtesy of VCCI

Small and medium sized enterprises are still lacking access to funds, said Mai Dinh Manh, a senior official from the Vietnam Electro-Technical Industry Association. He urged the government to set priority to widen businesses’ access to funding sources.

In the textile industry, the country had a good year in 2016 but the future is bleaker as labor cost has risen above that in other key textile export nations, said Nguyen Xuan Duong, deputy chairman of the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association.

The cost in India ranges between $100 and $120 per month, while it is $80 in Bangladesh, far below Vietnam's cost of at least $200, he said.

Besides, Duong also touched upon the policy of interest rates in Vietnam. "For an export-oriented country like Vietnam, is this good to peg the interest rate like we are doing now?” he said.

Over the past year, VCCI has received over 400 inquiries from companies across the country and has already handled 320 of them, Loc said. The remaining 80 inquiries are being looked into by the authorities because there are certain issues that may require legal amendments and reviewing by the National Assembly.

All the issues are gathered and reported to the Prime Minister and related agencies every month, Loc reaffirmed.

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> Vietnam banks to slam doors on home-based business owners

 
 
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