Addressing the event, VAFIE Vice President Nguyen Van Toan called on participants to openly and frankly discuss new policies for foreign invested companies in the area of pharmaceuticals, especially the recommendations from FDI firms dealing with the exports and imports of pharmaceuticals in Vietnam.
As stated by the enterprises and legal and trade experts in attendance, shortcomings still remain in some new provisions related to the field of pharmaceuticals, such as the Decree No. 54/2017/ND-CP guiding the implementation of the Law on Pharmacy (Decree No. 54) and a draft circular detailing a number of articles of the Decree No. 54, which have yet to meet with Vietnam’s international commitments.
Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, Director of the WTO and International Integration Centre under the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), said that pursuant to Article 7 of the Law on Enterprises, businesses have the right to carry out their own activities or can delegate and agree with other agents to carry out their activities without being interfered with by the law.
The VCCI representative asked the compilation board to revise Article 3 of the draft circular detailing a number of articles of the Decree No. 54 in the direction of eliminating all the regulations forcing companies to directly perform the activities related to distribution.
According to Chung Yee Seck, a lawyer representing the Amcham’s legal subcommittee, Decree No. 54 and the draft circular detailing a number of articles of Decree No. 54 prevent foreign invested enterprises from providing the drug preservation and transportation services, which, however, are not prohibited or limited by the Law on Pharmacy.
