Business registration: bustling at the beginning of the year

The representativves of enterprises do procedures at the Business Registration Office (Department of Planning and Investment of Hanoi) in the early days of 2018. Photo: Hoai Anh.

Increasing both in number of enterprises and registered capital

According to the report of the Customs Newspaper, at the Business Registration Office of the Hanoi Department of Planning and Investment (MPI), in the beginning of the year, a number of enterprises registered their business and implemented related business procedures such as opening branches, and increasing charter capital ... they are relatively bustling. Talking to reporters, Nguyen Cong Tan, a representative of a construction company said, his business was just established in early February 2018. Explaining establishment of an enterprise instead of working in large enterprises in the construction industry as before, Nguyen Cong Tan said, after a period of working in a professional environment he had been gaining experience, so he wanted to run his own business, test himself in a new environment and become autonomous. The representative of this company said that he asked a professional service company for support so the procedure is very fast and convenient. The fee is also very reasonable for small and medium enterprises.

The representative of another company said her business had just been established in late 2017, operating in the field of import and export. The company has just signed a high value contract for importing machinery and equipment so the representative is carrying out procedures to increase charter capital. According to the representative of this business, at the beginning of the year due to the number of enterprises doing procedures being relatively high she had to wait to be guided by the staff of Business Registration Office.

Representatives of the Hanoi Department of Planning and Investment said that in the coming time the Department will continue to consolidate the business registration system and create the most favorable conditions for businesses with many new measures. Currently, Hanoi is leading the country in business registration online with 100% of businesses registered online, while in Ho Chi Minh City 55%, the national average of 45%. This is a major effort by the DPI as well as the business registration department.

According to data from MPI, in January 2018, there were nearly 11,000 registered enterprises in the country. It is worth noting that the charter capital of enterprises has increased significantly over the same period last year, namely with the total registered capital of enterprises of VND 98.300 billion, this number increased 8.9% compared to the same period in 2017. If we mention VND 218.000 billion of registered added capital to the economy in January 2018, the total was VND 316,000 billion. Meanwhile, the number of enterprises increased to 20.6%. In February, 7,864 new businesses were established with a registered capital of VND 99.1 trillion, down 27.4% in number but up 0.8% in registered capital compared to the previous month. According to experts, the number of newly established enterprises decreased because February coinciding with the holiday Lunar New Year. Although the number of newly established enterprises this month decreased compared with the previous month, the good news is that over the same period last year, the number of enterprises increased 44%, the registered capital increased 59.1%, and the average registered capital of a business increased by 10.5%.

Prior to that, in 2017, there were nearly 130,000 newly established enterprises in the country, that is the record number of business registrations in Vietnam so far.

Proactive solutions

In order to achieve the above results, besides the close attention and direction of the Government in improving the business environment and encouraging start-up of enterprises, at the beginning of the year the concerned ministries and branches have also had many solutions to promote the legal framework, creating favorable conditions for businesses of all economic sectors. Accordingly, from January 1/2018, the Department of Business Registration Management (MPI) has organized a training program to guide the use of information systems for processing registered enterprises and registered investment in the cities of Hanoi, Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh City is for business registration officers and DPI investment registration officials of management boards in economic zones, industrial parks, and export processing zones of 63 provinces and cities nationwide. In addition, from January, some kinds of fees for registering the establishment of enterprises, changing registration content, re-issuance of business registration certificates, has been reduced by 50% compared to before (currently at VND 100,000 / dossier). In addition, enterprises registering online are exempted from fees. The SMEs, which have transformed from business households are exempted from the registration fee and providing information on enterprises the first time.

According to Mr. Nguyen Manh Quyen, Director of Hanoi DPI, this Department has strongly directed the business registration department to carry out the reform in order to create a breakthrough in the implementation of the task. This Department acknowledged that business registration and business development is an important field. According to the spirit of the Government, by 2020, the country is to reach 1 million enterprises, of which Hanoi is assigned the task of reaching 400,000 enterprises. Up to now, the whole city has reached 230,000 enterprises. "There are over 3 years to reach the target, which means that 170,000 more enterprises are required, while the average annual business registration is more than 50,000 enterprises. This is a great target that the government assigned to Hanoi. We identify this as a long term task for the period 2018-2020," said Nguyen Manh Quyen.

Prior to that, in a press conference reporting the key indicators to assess the level of enterprise development in provinces and cities under central government in 2017 and the period 2010 - 2016, Mr Nguyen Bich Lam, Director General of the General Statistics Office, showed that the total number of enterprises operating to 31/12/2017 nationwide is estimated at 561,064. According to some experts, in order to achieve the target of 1 million enterprises in 2020, for each year on average there must be about 150 thousand newly established enterprises, assuming that the number of enterprises that stop operating and the number of enterprises returning to the annual activity are roughly the same. With the government's determination to build the Government for business, the expectation in the coming time of confidence in the business environment will continue to increase, and thanks to that, the number of newly established enterprises will increase and Vietnam will have 1 million businesses by 2020.