Thua Thien Hue provincial authorities are adopting firm measures to accelerate public administration reform, improve the business environment and enhance competitiveness towards building a dynamic, acting government, said Mr. Nguyen Dai Vui, Director of the Thua Thien Hue Department of Planning and Investment.
What are the remarkable outcomes of investment attraction of Thua Thien Hue province in 2018 and goals and tasks for 2019-2020?
In 2018, Thua Thien Hue province carried out focused investment promotion activities aimed at reputable domestic and regional investors with proven capacity, experience and prestige to bring their projects that match local development orientation, potential and strengths to the province.
On October 12, 2018, the Provincial People's Committee issued the Official Document (7857/UBND-XTDT) to make the list of 13 key projects prioritized to call for investment and these projects were made public information and criteria. On January 26, 2019, the Provincial People's Committee issued Decision 235/QD-UBND supplementing the list of calling for investment, adding 39 projects to the list. Up to now, many investors have expressed their interests and started studying the published project information.
With these active preparations, right in the first quarter of 2019, Thua Thien Hue obtained very encouraging results, decided on new investment policies for seven projects with a total investment of VND13,105 billion, which need more than 625 ha of land. In 2019, the province set a goal of licensing 15 projects with a total pledged capital of VND10,000 billion but it already exceed the yearly plan in the first quarter.
In 2019-2020, investment promotion and business support have been defined to promote domestic and foreign investors in all fields. In particular, Thua Thien Hue province determined to develop information technology human resources to catch up with the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Accordingly, the province has focused on promoting investment relating to the Industry 4.0 such as information technology, cultural industry, cultural values, heritage, high tech, smart agriculture, new materials, biotechnology and other industries that matach local development orientations.
To comply with the above-mentioned orientation, the Department of Planning and Investment will focus on the following tasks
(1) Calling for domestically and regionally reputable, capable investors. In the near term, the province will focus resources to support units that signed the memorandums of understanding on strategic cooperation with the Provincial People's Committee, to speed up the progress of licensed projects.
(2) Speeding up high-tech agriculture investment.
(3) Promoting investor support in the Industry 4.0, supporting investors interested in researching information technology industry.
(4) Further supporting and speeding up the progress of licensed investment projects.
(5) Based on licensed investment projects, updating progress regularly, promoting images and information of projects to the public and investment market to transmit messages on better investment environment of the province.
How do you assess the quality of investment administrative procedures in recent years?
With the goal of creating a friendly investment environment and being the most attractive destination for investors, in the past three years, we issued the annual plan for the Thua Thien Hue Business Year with basic objectives of raising the community awareness of the role, position and importance of entrepreneurs and businesses and arousing entrepreneurship; increasing entrepreneurs and enhancing quality and competitiveness of the business community. The province fundamentally changed the way of calling for investment, the spirit and service attitude of public employees; created a favorable, fair and transparent investment and business environment for enterprises to maximize their capacity and successfully realize local socioeconomic objectives.
In addition, the Provincial Party Committee announced a separate topic on investment promotion, directing relevant sectors to build investment database, analyze comparative advantages and shape development trends to figure out sectors, markets and subjects needed to be focused for investment attraction; and to organize investment promotion events eyeing at specific investors. In order to assist investors to complete procedures to kick off their projects in the shortest time, the Provincial People’s Committee established an interagency investor support working group to assist investors when they are in Thua Thien Hue province.
With the efforts of the provincial government, many large enterprises such as Vingroup, BRG, and Van Phu Invest Joint Stock Company are paying increasing interest to doing business in Thua Thien Hue, and bringing bigger and bigger projects here.
What is your opinion about the performance of Thua Thien Hue province’s Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) last year?
In 2018, the province’s PCI standing slid slightly from the previous year, ranking No. 30 (compared with No. 29 in 2017), but its PCI score rose by 1.14 points (from 62.37 points to 63.51 points) and it was classified into the group of provinces and cities with “good” governance (compared to “medium” governance in 2017). Optimistically, Thua Thien Hue led the country in two component indices: “Market entry” and “transparency.” According to the business community, these were important component indices as they directly affected interests, costs and time of most businesses. However, the province still had some low-ranking indicators such as fair competition and inspection visit in enterprises.
Objectively speaking, Thua Thien Hue spared no effort for better PCI outcome, but other localities worked better.
2018 was the first year in Thua Thien Hue province to launch the DDCI Index. How about this index performance?
The DDCI Index (short for Department and District Competitiveness Index) is a set of performance quality assessment indicators for provincial departments and localities. This index was built with comments and the feedback of investors, enterprises, households and cooperatives doing business in the province on administrative quality of provincial departments and agencies, District-level People’s Committees and Hue City. Although this was the first year of DDCI in the province, by learning experiences from other provinces, Thua Thien Hue seriously evaluated 22 provincial departments/agencies and nine District People's Committees.
In order to increase evaluation objectivity, the Provincial People’s Committee assigned the Young Entrepreneurs Association to lead and work with the Provincial Business Association to carry out independent assessments under the guidance and advice of the Bac Ninh Socioeconomic Research and Development Institute and PCI (Provincial Competitiveness Index) experts. The survey collected nearly 1,500 votes, with the appropriate rates for such criteria as workforce size, field of activity, time of operation and type of business to ensure the high representativeness of survey results.
DDCI 2018 saw high scores in many strong fields such as transparency, leadership and fair competition. The scoring scale of processes of implementing administrative procedures is simple, easy to apply is highly appreciated by businesses. The score given to agency leaders is carefully weighed by enterprises. Their responses were close to practices and their thinking. DDCI results will be used as a measure for the Provincial People's Committee to assess the economic administration capacity of local authorities and provincial agencies every year.
This survey encourages DDCI-impacted units to actively study and assess the sentiment of the business community on the quality of economic management at all levels of administration, thus creating a competing atmosphere for better economic governance between and within units and formulating drastic reform motivations for better service to investors and enterprises.
With DDCI surveys, the province kept inspiring reforms from the provincial to grassroots levels, dramatically improved perceptions and actions of civil servants, upgraded the quality of public services, enhanced competitiveness, and further reformed the investment and business climate of Thua Thien Hue province.
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