In a recent meeting with the Party Central Committee's Commission for Policies and Strategies and relevant ministries and agencies on economic growth, General Secretary To Lam emphasised that the most crucial factor for socio-economic development is mobilising the entire population to participate in labour and creating material wealth. To encourage greater participation from the business community, the General Secretary set specific goals including reducing administrative procedure processing time by at least 30%, cutting business costs by at least 30%, especially in customs, regulatory compliance costs and informal expenses, and eliminating at least 30% of unnecessary business conditions.
Vietnam began reforming its business environment, right after Doi Moi (Renewal) with the Law on Foreign Investment in 1987, the Law on Company and the Law on Private Enterprise in 1990. Reforms were accelerated from 2000 after the Enterprise Law 1999 was promulgated with the spirit that "enterprises are allowed to operate in any industry that is not prohibited by law". This period also saw the emergence of the business conditions and the fight against "sub-licenses" concept, which achieved many encouraging results.
However, although the Government's resolution on improving the investment and business environment has entered its 11th year (from Resolution No. 19/2014/NQ-CP), the goal of bringing Vietnam into the ASEAN Top 4, in terms of business environment, remains a big challenge.
Efforts to reform the investment and business environment must be viewed with a new mindset. As the General Secretary suggested, it is necessary to boldly apply a separate legal framework. Vietnam's legal system still has not kept up with the rapid development of the digital economy, innovation and international integration. To create breakthroughs, implementing controlled regulatory sandboxes for emerging technologies, developing a separate legal mechanism for economic-tech zones, preferential tax policies, and a specific mechanism for resolving trade disputes are necessary.
In the current context, with numerous challenges from the world economy and geopolitical fluctuations, the business community, especially the private enterprise sector in Vietnam, needs more support in mechanisms, policies and strengthening business confidence.
Streamlining administrative procedures and cutting business conditions to reduce compliance and operational costs for enterprises is crucial to bring the proportion of private sector investment back to double-digit growth. The review, assessment and removal of bottlenecks in regulations on conditional business lines need to be carried out under a new mindset: abolishing and significantly narrowing the list of conditional business lines, quickly and strongly shifting from "pre-inspection" to "post-inspection" according to standards, regulations, risk levels and compliance history, thereby expanding business freedom, encouraging innovation and promoting development. With the higher requirements on business environment rankings set by General Secretary To Lam, the reform process has the opportunity to be promoted more strongly. A high and sustainable economic growth must be nurtured from a highly competitive business environment.
