Business law: No escape of removing thinking

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Enterprises want policies to continue to improve in 2019. Photo: H.

Change but also form

In order to make assessments and recommendations on business laws in Vietnam in 2018, on January 15, Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) organized a Conference to review business laws 2018.

At the Conference, VCCI published a report on Business Law Flow 2018 to review the legal regulations that have a great impact on the business community in Vietnam in each period of comments from experts, businessmen, lawyers and business associations...

The report provides analysis, comment and evaluation to draw experience for building business law in the next period.

Presenting the report, Mr. Dau Anh Tuan, Head of Legal Department, VCCI, said that the trend of business law in 2018 is to remove barriers for enterprises when reviewing business investment conditions, administrative procedures, specialized inspection procedures ..., thereby promoting private economic development.

Therefore, the review and reform of business conditions in 2018 have many "bright points" when abolishing and simplifying hundreds of business conditions. In particular, the VCCI representative said that the remarkable point of this review is that there are positive movements in the thinking of policy makers.

However, in addition, Mr. Dau Anh Tuan said, there are still inconsistencies in ministries and sectors; levels of publicity and consultation are still different. There are ministries, branches and towns, opening seminars, discussions to listen with dialogues and exchange, but many ministries do not conduct or conduct under the direction of the Government, and they do not really want to cut or reduce business conditions. In addition, the implementation of streamlining methods has not been widespread and public because decrees are issued too hastily.

“According to the report, the majority of ministries have set a reduction figure, simplifying it to over 50%. However, when analysing in-depth each option or regulations, it can be seen that in many cases cuts are only formal, ensuring quantity requirements but with little practical significance,” said Mr. Dau Anh Tuan.

It is not only disassemble, but also development

The further discussion about the operation of business law reform in the past year, Dr. Phan Duc Hieu, Deputy Director of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), said that the law is not only to remove barriers but also to promote development, but there is still no decree or law which is issued to escape the mental barriers to disassembly.

According to Dr. Phan Duc Hieu, in the reform of current business law, there are three very important challenges. One is that all reforms stem from the imposition of the Government on ministries and agencies, not just one ministry, and any sector can actively propose reforms, abolish business conditions. Thus, Mr. Hieu wondered if the Government did not require this anymore, will the motivation for reform be lost?

The second challenge, according to CIEM representatives, is the quality control of regulations. "Personally, I have witnessed many business conditions that have been abolished by ministries and branches, but other ministries and branches have added them," Hieu said.

The final challenge is that the scope of reform is very small, only in terms of market entry and specialized inspection procedures, while there are many regulations and business conditions that have a greater impact.

Facing with the above situation, in 2019 and the following years, experts and businesses all proposed that the issue of improving business law should be approached from the direction of changing managerial thinking, changing the way of approach to achieve efficiency.

In this regard, Mr. Phan Duc Hieu said frankly that ministries, agencies and management agencies should not argue anymore, because a series of unnecessary business conditions must be immediately abolished; it should separate public non-business units with functions of inspection, testing, quality control out of ministries, branches and private delivery. In the long term, the drafting of legal documents should be delegated to specialized agencies, not law enforcement agencies.

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On the other hand, Mr. Hieu also proposed a mechanism to invest in making policies. "I believe that the poorest officer is a policy officer, so in the long term, it is necessary to invest in the policy-making department, which must be considered as infrastructure investment," said Dr. Hieu said.

In the same view, Dr. Vu Tien Loc, Chairman of VCCI, said that besides welcoming positive moves from management agencies, the business community set expectations on policies to promote economic development in the future: Continue removing the barriers to business environment, reforming business conditions, and for administrative procedures to continue being promoted in a more substantive way ... The policy will be the driving force, or barriers for business activities in this era will depend heavily on the policy thinking of current managers.