Necessarily Continuing to Boost Publicity and Transparency in Business

With respect to the province-level business environment, enhancing transparency is a matter of grave importance as it helps boost competitiveness of the province and enterprises as well. Transparency helps improve investor confidence, boost the efficiency of corporate resource allocations, reduce unofficial costs in accessing information and shooting problems, and promote equality of business opportunities.

 

With regard to the economy, transparency-boosting policies help keep inflation in check and accelerate economic growth. Countries providing better economic information will help better manage indicators such as government performance, corruption control, accountability improvement, law enforcement, and governance effectiveness, etc.

 

At a conference on improving the transparency of provincial/municipal business environment in Vietnam held by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) in collaboration with the Asia Foundation in Danang City on January 14, 2011, attending experts shared the viewpoint that transparency in business environment is a driving force of development but the transparency in accessing information and monitoring at provincial/municipal levels is declining.

 

According to Mr Dau Anh Tuan, Deputy Director General of the Legal Department, VCCI, the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) 2009 shows some criteria have been declined, for instance, transparency, unofficial costs, dynamism and proactiveness of provincial leaders. Remarkably, transparency is declined to the rate in 2006 when a majority (61.26 percent) of companies reported that only “having relationship” can access to documents related to business activities be provided. This is worrying because transparency is one of the two most weighted components (20 percent) in calculating the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) although the computing method had been changed and the economy fell into difficulties in the past two years. Up to 41 percents of respondents said that negotiating payable tax rates with tax authorities was a common activity; and only 8.4 percent of respondents could anticipate law implementation of provinces.

 

According to a survey by VCCI in 2009, 25 out of 63 provincial websites did not disclose information about working assignments of provincial leaders, only 10 websites published local draft legal documents to consult opinions of the public and businesses, and only six websites had hot lines, etc.

 

According to Ms Pham Chi Lan, a senior economic expert, publicity does not always mean transparency. Currently, many legal documents issued by the Central Government, ministries and other authorities on newspapers and television but localities usually have different understanding and application. So, there is publicity but transparency is not yet sufficient to be understood and applied consistently everywhere. At present, a legal document is issued but it needs many guiding documents for implementation.

 

Mrs. Lan added that transparency is necessary not only from central and provincial levels but also from businesses to create confidence of partners and strengthen competitiveness, etc.

 

Dr. Le Dang Doanh, senior economist, said: In Vietnam, the index of publicity and transparency is quite low, thus causing significantly bad impacts on the investment and business environment. Transparency in Vietnam is presently not good enough and needs to be made public and improved further. Many websites owned by ministries and provinces are opened for the public and enterprises but still formal, information is out-of-date and insufficient. He added that popularising and improving IT knowledge is crucial to boost publicity and transparency. To achieve publicity and transparency, enterprises and people need to understand IT.

 

According to a research by VCCI, when transparency index leaped one point in the PCI, the province will see an increase of 13 percents of number of enterprises on 1,000 population, 17 percents increase in per capita investment, and VND 62 million of profit increase in an enterprise.

 

However, PCI 2009 results show that Vietnam, in general, continues to have significant progress in administrative procedure reform. It is noted that there are significant improvements in time spending to implement state regulations and reduced costs in market participation, these results may be stem from more drastic deployment of public administration reform (the Proposal #30).