6:25:27 PM | 6/6/2012
“Given the advantages of geographical location, transport roads, being active and joining hands with enterprises and businessmen of local authorities, Bac Ninh will continue to be the ideal destination of investors,” said Mr Nguyen Quoc Chung, Director of Bac Ninh Department of Planning and Investment, in an interview with Vietnam Business Forum. Tran Tung reports.
Can you kindly share about the remarkable achievements Bac Ninh has gained over the past years, and its potential for the coming years?
Since the re-establishment in 1997, thanks to support from the authority, direction from Provincial Party Committee, People’s Council and People’s Committee, efforts of departments and agencies, Bac Ninh has gained great achievements in investment attraction and improved its position.
Particularly, so far, there have been 602 investment projects of domestic enterprises with total registered capital of VND 66,246 billion in the province. Especially, Bac Ninh’s record of attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) enterprises is as follows: in 1997, 4 businesses with total registered capital of US$177.6 million, to the current figure of 339 FDI units including 322 FDI projects and 17 branches and representative offices with total registered capital after adjustment of US$3,910.21 million. Bac Ninh is the host to many famed firms in the world such as: Canon, Sumitomo from Japan; SamSung, Orion from South Korea; Foxconn, Mictac from Taiwan; Tyco Electronics from the United States; and ABB from Sweden. Recently, Nokia (Finland) has invested in Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP Bac Ninh). On April 23rd 2012, this corporation started construction of the plant manufacturing cell phone devices on the total area of 17 ha, with initial funds of over €200 million. The plant is expected to begin operation in early 2013 and create jobs for about 10,000 labours at maximum capacity.
Thus, foreign investors coming to seek and make investment in Bac Ninh are an advantage helping Bac Ninh to communicate about the province and its investment environment and bringing about large influence.
Aiming to make Bac Ninh basically a modern industrial province by 2015, Bac Ninh determines to be active and go head in building social-economic infrastructure, make good planning and especially foster administrative procedural reforms, improvement of investment – business environment. The province has worked out the orientation for investment attraction in period 2011-2015 in the direction of increasing the quality, efficiency, ensuring the environment, prioritizing investment attraction into modern, high technology industries, bringing about large added value, economically and efficiently using natural resources, aiming at sustainable development.
Given the advantages of geographical location, transport roads, being active and joining hands with enterprises and businessmen of local authorities, Bac Ninh will continue to be the ideal destination of investors.
In the context of economic depression and delayed progress of many investment projects, what are Bac Ninh’s strategies for the situation?
Concerning this issue, the province is planning to prepare the production facility for investment projects by completing planning and implementing infrastructure of concentrated industrial park and small industrial zones. The province has timely organized a dialogue and worked out a solution to tackle obstacles for each specific enterprise and quickly handle related administrative procedures.
Besides, Bac Ninh has timely introduced many solutions to assist and create favourable conditions for project implementing agencies, such as: adopt policies supporting and encouraging investment; encourage expansion of the local credit organization network, at the same time requesting banks to comply with interest rate and lending structure policies and give priority to businesses with industrial production and trading; promote the operation of credit guarantee funds for small and medium enterprises, bridging and supporting businesses to get loans for production and trade; complete infrastructure serving project implementation such as: transport, power supply, water supply and drainage, and accommodation for labourers.
The rapid industrialization in Bac Ninh requires a large number of highly qualified personnel. Therefore, we have prepared a Master Plan for Human Resources Development to 2020 and Proposal for Qualified Labourers, to provide human resources of quality meeting enterprises’ demand.
As a consultant for the Provincial People’s Committee in investment attraction, what have you done to reform administrative procedures to create preferential conditions for investors?
One of enterprises’ first concerns when selecting an investment location is the simplicity of local administrative procedures. Being aware of this issue, the Department has consulted the province to adopt one-gate, connected one-gate and modern connected one-gate procedures for many fields related to businesses, including fields of business registration, tax registration, and corporate establishment sealing to reduce the required number of office visits from 13 to 3, and processing time to only 5 days.
We’ve done a good job to support enterprises by providing project information, guidelines about procedures and order of investment, construction project implementation, and new market penetration. Regarding settlement of investment and construction procedures for those outside the industrial parks under Decision 165/2009/QD-UB, businesses have saved time and money with processing time reduced from 120-150 days to 80-100 days and number of documents from 62 to 27-33.
In addition, the Department has consulted with the province to extend investment forms (especially form of built – transfer – BT) to create preferential conditions and attract enterprises to come and invest and do trading in the localities.
Moreover, the Department has advised the province to implement the proposal of training qualified workforce, improving training quality of vocational schools and centres; connect and support enterprises in training and recruitment activities, reinforce the role of Lawyer Mission, public certification offices, Law companies, legal consulting organizations in assisting and consulting about laws, protecting the rights of businesses; better quality in handling corporate lawsuits; intensify coordination among departments at levels in investigating enterprises to avoid overlapping and causing annoyance.
Especially, it is the Department that has consulted the Provincial Party Committee to release Conclusion No. 03/TU-KL dated April 14 2011 and Chairman of Provincial People’s Committee to introduce Direction 06/CT-UBND dated April 26th 2011 to continue to better business environment, increase competitiveness, which figured measures to improve business environment, raise the sub-index in provincial PCI index.
03/4/2025
Ho Chi Minh City
Vietnamese
