April 27 has become a traditional day of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), which is also an opportunity for VCCI to review what it has done to develop orientations for its future activities with the most important target of helping the Vietnamese business community.
For years, VCCI has always accompanied the business community, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with enterprises during their development. Dr Vu Tien Loc, president of VCCI, said that one of the most important targets of VCCI in the new period was to bring the total number of Vietnam enterprises to 50,000 in 2010.
A bridge between Government and business community
According to Dr Loc, the improvement of the business environment is also an important task with a focus in administrative reform and support for enterprises to get access to land for production and business activities, cut input costs and contribute their comments and inputs to laws. VCCI has organised many open dialogues between representatives from enterprises and authorised agencies, and ministries, such as the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the Ministry of Labour, War Invalid and Social Affairs, the Government Inspectorate, the State Bank of Vietnam, to help the business community to overcome difficulties in production and business activities.
VCCI last year conducted and released a survey on provincial competitiveness index (PCI), which was considered as a test for the health of the business environment in provinces and cities in Vietnam. In 2006, VCCI is conducting the same survey with over 30,000 enterprises with 63,000 comments and inputs in 64 provinces and cities nationwide. The analysis of data will be completed in June 2006.
Always standing side-by-side with enterprises
Hoang Van Dung, vice president of VCCI, said that in the coming time VCCI would organise more activities to support the business community. Accordingly, it will promote the conduction of surveys and researches on the development of the economy and enterprises. Its role as a representative for employers will be also strengthened. Concretely, VCCI will develop and release annual reports on labour relationships in Vietnam, and propose measures to the Government to prevent strikes and actively get involved in addressing issues emerging from labour relationship, in particular in the foreign-invested sector.
Also, according to Dung, a model of trade promotion organised in the form of Vietnamese Days in some countries would be further promoted in major markets, as the model proved its high effectiveness in 2005 when it was organised by VCCI in Germany and Singapore.
Business forums and councils should be expanded with a focus given to the building and organising the Vietnam-Japan and the Vietnam-EU business forums, and the Vietnam-Australia-New Zealand and ACMECS business councils.
Alongside its programmes for helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), VCCI will concentrate on developing advance training programmes for top Vietnamese enterprises, providing support services for business development for enterprises, such as product design, quality management, research and development, and distribution system development. Also, VCCI will help enterprises promote their application of information technology for international integration and development, building and implementation of projects and programmes on sustainable development for enterprises, and regional alliance for effectively developing the local economy.
Le Dinh Luan, director of the Nguyen Hong Company, saidactivities of VCCI should be updated regularly to help enterprises orientate their development. As a representative of the business community, VCCI should take more concrete measures to boost enterprises’ international integration, organising more activities to honour enterprises and entrepreneurs. More importantly, VCCI should not consider enterprises and entrepreneurs subject to its management and supervision. It should be more determined to remove discrimination between enterprises of different economic sectors.
Pham Thien Can, deputy chairman of the Vietnam Glass Association, saidVCCI should develop concrete orientations for business associations, thus helping them find suitable ways. In the coming time, VCCI should help the establishment of business associations according to groups of goods, thus promoting co-operation among associations, especially in exporting goods.
Nguyen Van Hoai, general director of Union of Science and Technology, saidin recent years, VCCI’s support for enterprises had played an important role during enterprises’ development. All programmes and projects on enterprise support developed by VCCI are concretely and have benefited enterprises. However, few enterprises operating in science and technology have become members of VCCI while potential for this field of VCCI members is huge. Therefore, VCCI should promote the development of the force to provide more effective support for enterprises.
Tuan Anh
Vietnamese
