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Representative of the State Bank of Vietnam answered the questions of enterprises at the dialogue. Photo: Nguyen Hue

Still many obstacles

Reporting the results of the survey of more than 100 enterprises operating in the fields of tourism, digital economic–start-ups, creativity, agriculture, finance and some other fields, Mr. Truong Gia Binh, Vice Chairman of the Advisory Council for Administrative Procedure Reform, said that 73% of the enterprises surveyed said that the procedures were cumbersome causing time delays for enterprises, 64%of the enterprises complained about theattitude and behaviour of civil officials, and46% of enterprises mentioned the overlap between state agencies.

Regarding the cumbersome procedures, most of them are procedures related toimport, land allocation, APEC cards and procedures for establishment of publishing enterprises. Regarding the attitudes of the public authorities; enterprises had met many difficulties in contacting public authorities, many authorities handled dossiers as a criminal matter, and the civil officials expressed a bureaucratic attitude and harassed enterprises for their local interests.

Regarding the solutions to support enterprises, they highly appreciated the international integration, helping them to increase their import-export activities. 27% of the enterprises acknowledged theefforts on administrative reform, with 73% of them assessing the effort on administrative reform at amedium level. And the review and reduction of public investment were also assessed at the medium level. Some solutions had not been appreciated by enterprises, such as land, equitization and bad debt settlement.

The survey results also revealed that enterprises highly appreciated the support from the Government and the State. However, the implementation at levels were restricted. In particular, many state supported activities were not implemented in the localities.

Reflectingon the difficulties and obstacles for each specific sector, representatives of enterprises said:for the agricultural sector, the policy to attract investment was not effective, policies to encourage enterprises to invest in advanced technology agriculture was not suitable, andenterprises had difficulty in accessing preferential mechanisms. In addition, the agricultural sector did not have a proper exchange for agricultural products; the mechanism of public-private partnerships in trade promotion of the sector was still limited and ineffective, and specific and timely support policy for the seed shrimp sector to increase productivity and ensure sustainable development of shrimp breeding areas wasunavailable.

For the tourism sector, enterprises said that the investment and promotion of national tourism is not commensurate with the development objective and national tourism potential: visa policy for international visitors to Vietnam was also a barrier; the environment in tourism areas was not controlled properly and professionally, thereby reducing significantly the number of visitors back to Vietnam; the public authorities had arbitrary behaviours and abused the enforcement of legal policies to harass enterprises.

In the financial sector, enterprises explained that the equitization of state owned enterprises was still slow. Long-term capital for the economy was insufficient. The registration of capital for foreign investors was difficult due to inconsistent and non-systematic specialized documents. There were inadequacies of policies to attract investment between foreign enterprises and domestic enterprises.

Fulfil the institutions to support enterprises

Duringthe dialogue, representatives of ministries and sectors answered many questions from the enterprises. Specifically in terms of difficultyregarding visa exemption for foreigners so as to promotetourism, Major Le Xuan Vien, Director of the Immigration Department of the Ministry of Public Security, said that it was a complicated matter and required a process of negotiation to ensuresustainable development, and it was also a matter of reciprocity in bilateral relations. Regarding the issue of APEC cards, Mr. Vien said the Department had made great efforts to facilitate business people. However and in fact, some countries such as Australia, Japan, and Taiwan had responded in 30 days, rather than the 15 day requirement, and sometimes even longer because many businesspeople used APEC cards for the wrong purpose.

Regardingcapital, theDeputy Governor of the State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV), Doan Minh Tu, also asserted the SBVcomprehensively supported enterprises in accessingcapital. The liquid capital of commercial banks was very abundant, and banks were also very competitive in accessing customers. So enterprises had many options and the lack of capital for business and production was not an issue.

Talking about theobstacles reflected uponby enterprises, Ha Cong Tuan, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, acknowledged support policies were not practical, credits for advance technology agriculture were limited and the procedures were still cumbersome. In order to be supported, a project needs to carry out 16 steps and 40 procedures

Recognizing the difficulties and obstacles for enterprises, the Minister of Finance, Chairman of Government Office, and Chairman of the Advisory Council for Administrative Procedure Reform, Mai Tien Dung, said that the agencies would sum up the opinions of enterprises and report to the Prime Minister in order to assist relevant institutions towards assigning one matter to one agency associated with the responsibility of the head, and removing the barriers ofsub-licenses in order to overcome the difficulties enterprises face.

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Regarding matters under the authority of ministries, sectors and localities, Mr. Mai Tien Dung suggested that for unanswered questions, ministries and agencies should have public written answers as soon as possible.