Public Administration Reform: Needing Involvement from Businesses

 

The Project 30 is the largest-ever public administration reform, reflecting the highest political determination to remove one of three obstacles against growth. The impediment of soft and hard infrastructure requires much time and resources to be solved. But, the hindrance of administrative procedures, once addressed, will facilitate the resolution of other problems to create a more positive development environment. The project has received the broad response of the society and had involvement of more than 20 ministries and all 63 provinces and cities. Nearly 6,000 procedures and hundreds of thousands of documents have been found. Importantly, we have established three principle criteria for construction of administrative procedures, that is, “necessary, rational and lawful.” These criteria are strictly followed during the process of building the procedures and formulating new styles of thinking and working for civil servants. A successful reform from the debut shows that the experience, in addition to the high political determination, still needs a well-built organisation, advanced methods and the broad participation of social forces. This is the effect of Project 30 in gathering forces to reform administrative procedures.

 

Certainly, businesses benefits most from cutting administrative procedures. When there is a transparent business environment, enterprises will be able to access business opportunities more easily. Thus, enterprises normally put forth most exact and practical proposals for examining groups to review administrative procedures and make recommendations. The reform focuses on the involvement of companies and that is why VCCI was selected as one of the members of the Advisory Council for Public Administration Reform.

 

However, it is noteworthy that the administrative procedure reform seems to fail to attract to collect ideas from all enterprises. Possibly, due to curbing with difficulties in production and trading in the past time, many businesses did not pay proper attention to this matter. But, this is also possibly because Vietnamese enterprises feel hesitant in working with policymakers on this sensitive matter.

 

In all of its proposals, by many ways, VCCI has based on opinions from businesses and industry associations. Nonetheless, I think, it is not enough. We indeed need recommendations and findings from enterprises. Especially, after the national set of administrative procedures was announced by the Prime Minister, if enterprises find out the absence of administrative procedures they must deal with, they should send recommendations for consideration and supplementation.

 

The second phase of Project 30 is extremely a big challenge as the simplification of administrative procedures will “touch” interests of some powerful agencies and organisations. Thus, the positive participation of businesses and the mass media can be considered an indispensable guarantee for this difficult phase.

 

We confirm that the business community is not only the beneficiary but they should also be responsible for examining and proposing abolition, improvement or construction of appropriate administrative procedures.

 

I think the completed first phase has also created a significant driving force for businesses. When they have the trust that what they contribute are listened and received, more and more companies will raise their voice. But, to let enterprises push back their hesitancy in the relationship with governing bodies, such bodies and civil servants must have a positive involvement in the cause. We must create partnership ties between businesses and governing agencies. Importantly, businesses and officials must complete their works without causing any negative impacts on any others.

 

Actually, several officials want to keep themselves safe and tend to pass the buck to enterprises. Even, some officials did not propose for improvement when they found irrationalities in administrative procedures. Thus, in addition to encouraging businesses to raise their voice, governing bodies and officials should give prominence to responsibility, activeness and transparency in their work. Responsibility and ethics of civil servants should be added weight.

 

[We are] assigned to undertake the review of procedures in three areas, namely tax, customs and labour relations to put forward recommendations for improvement. VCCI has proposed abolishing 23 administrative procedures in connection to the customs field, five administrative procedures involving the taxation field and some administrative procedures related to labour relations.

 

Indeed, this figure seems a bit small if it is compared to a total of 261 sets of procedures in 11 areas needed to be reviewed. But, in our viewpoint, the number of proposals is not as important as the efficiency that they bring in.

 

I would like to stress that we need to make up clear and transparent administrative procedure sets meeting requirements of legality, validity, effectiveness, feasibility and suitability with Vietnamese enterprises and people.

 

In this review, VCCI not only recommends cutting down unsuitable procedures but also proposes more suitable procedure sets to replace. For example, we propose customs authorities to rebuild procedures concerning the processing of export goods in the direction that overlapping, inconsistent and ambiguous procedures will be eradicated.

 

We must acknowledge that the administrative reform reflects the significant initiative of many governing bodies. For instance, the customs sector has announced that it would cut 40 % of administrative procedures, instead of a minimum 30 % required by the Prime Minister. However, there are quite many obstacles in this effort.

 

For example, in the customs sector, electronic customs declaration are much expected by enterprises but this method has not brought in maximum effectiveness as customs authorities still require declaring companies to show documentary records for electronic data instead of using stored database for inspection.

 

Technology does not meet practical requirements; thus, concerned authorities must find ways to protect themselves against the accountability in implementing administrative procedures. This is a cause for reduplication of administrative procedures. Thus, the State should invest properly for the application of modern technology to public management.