Breakthrough to achieve the targets

The business environment in Vietnam has many fields which are reformed strongly, but there are fields which have not. What do you think about this situation?

In the general picture of improving the business investment environment, there is a field improving positively but there is a field improving negligibly, even "freezing". Typically, taxes and customs are the two pioneering fields of administrative reform in Vietnam. However, the fields and institutions related to protecting the legal rights and benefits of enterprises, solving bankruptcy dissolution of enterprises, the field of land procedures still have problemsin thelegal system.

A VCCI study has shown 20 overlaps in the legal system of land, environment, construction, bidding, and bankruptcy disputes. These inadequacies are in the overlap of lawmaking ithard to enforce. The current legal system is open. Therefore, the regulatory agencies need to revise the relevant legal system to ensure consistency and synchronization, so as to eliminate overlaps and pave the way for business activities.

In addition to the differences in business, do you think that the local business environment also has differences?

In recent years, some localities have made a breakthrough in developing GRDP, improving the business environment, developing enterprises, andother localities have fallen. This depends strongly on the dynamics of local governments, heads of local agencies, departments and agencies; especially the creativity in using institutional policies to provide appropriate reforms in localities. Provinces with high development have shown effective reforms such as: assessing the competitiveness index of district, department and branch levels; establishment of an independent investment and trade promotion agency; building public administrative centers, implementing public-private partnerships, building e-government, interacting with people - businesses through social networks.

Therefore, one of the missions to promote reforms is to not only thoroughly implement policies and guidelines of the provinces, cities and the Central Government, but also to create reform models fitting localities. Each locality has different ways, but effect depends on the local ability. The sharing of good management practices will be a good way to improve competitiveness and improve the development of Vietnam’s business environment. VCCI will join hands with localities to create a movement of localities to learn from each other, to put new management models and tools into operation.

In fact, these measures have created clear results in recent years. The VCCI's Provincial Competitiveness Survey (PCI) showed that the administrative gap between localities has narrowed, showing the breakthrough of localities. This is the result of many localities' efforts, soother localities need to study as well as have higher political determination.

Vietnam has set many ambitious goals, such as reaching the top 4 of ASEAN in terms of competitiveness, with 1 million businesses operating by 2020. In your opinion, are these goals likely to be achieved?

Clearly, these goals have not been achieved so far. With the goal of being in the top 4 of ASEAN countries, Vietnam still has a big gap. Along with that, the journey to have 1 million businesses operating in 2020 is also very difficult.

Therefore, to achieve the goals, Vietnam must havebreakthroughs.Without such reforms and breakthroughs, it is difficult to implement. These efforts should start from removing and untying the relevant legal framework. We have conducted an analysis of Vietnam's competitiveness, we have also pointed out bottlenecks and points that are still far away from developing and developed countries in around the world. Therefore, we only need to focus on bottlenecks, if resolved; we will increase our competitiveness and create a breakthrough.

In particular, Vietnam can reach and exceed 1 million businesses. It all depends not only on institutional reform but also on the resources of the people and the will to start a business. This will is still very large and will be even greater with the country's strong economic development this year. I believe in the resources, the ability to raise capital, and the ability to raise foreign capital for start-ups. The problem is institutional reform must be further promoted so that investors and businesses can be assured, increasing trust for all investment, production and business activities.

Thank you, Sir!