Bac Giang expects to improve PCI score in upcoming years

Bac Giang expects to improve its PCI score in upcoming years

On June 13, Bac Giang People’s Committee organised an online seminar to analyse the component index of the province’s Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) in 2019 and discuss solutions to improve this index during this year and the upcoming ones.

According to statistics published by the Department of Planning and Investment, in 2019, Bac Giang reported 64.47 points in its PCI, up 1.46 point on-year. However, the ranking decreased by 4 steps on-year and stands currently at 40 out of 63 cities and provinces. Meanwhile, the administration improvement index reached 81.84 points, up 3.7 points on-year, and the satisfaction index of people, enterprises, and organisations on the administrative agencies reached 89.18 per cent, ranking 9 out of 63 cities and provinces.

The PCI measures the ease of doing business for the private sector, including the entry cost for new firms, land access, transparency, time costs of regulatory compliance, informal charges, proactivity of provincial leadership, policy bias, business support services, labour training, and legal institutions.

Duong Van Thai, chairman of Bac Giang People’s Committee said, “The PCI is an important index, showing the quality of the business and investment environment, the quality in managing and operating of leaders as well as our efforts to improve the administrative procedures of cities and provinces in general and Bac Giang in particular. Via learning experiences of localities who succeeded in the PCI and the province's efforts themselves, Bac Giang sets the target to jump to the group of the 15 cities and provinces with the highest PCI.”

Andreas Stoffers, director of Friedrich Naumann for Freedom Vietnam Foundation, a consultant for Bac Giang, said, “The province showed efforts to improve the PCI but can still do better. This year, when the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement comes into effect, Bac Giang needs to carefully prepare measures to cash in on the new investment inflow.”

According to statistics from the Department of Planning and Investment, there are 461 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects in the province, 300 of which are located in industrial parks. The total registered capital of these projects is more than $6 billion. Almost all of these projects operate in sectors like garments and textiles, electronic parts, and solar panels.

A representative of the province’s Investment Promotion Agency told VIR that numerous foreign investors have contacted the agency to study investment opportunities, one of which is a large-scale enterprise, which specialising in manufacturing parts for Apple's products.