Future the focus of Monday’s private sector-prime minister meeting

Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) chairman Vu Tien Loc illustration photo

What kind of enterprises will participate in the meeting?

In attendance will be around 500 business representatives from 300 private enterprises, 50 foreign businesses and 20 state businesses, as well as reps from a number of government agencies and business associations.

What does it suggest that private businesses will make up the lion’s share of attendees?

It shows the private sector is a driving force for economic development.

But it is also because it is seeing the most difficulties. Despite postive macro-economic indicators there are still great challenges. In the VCCI’s annual business report for Vietnam, it was reported that businesses were likely to scale down in terms of both scope and technology.

As such, an effective strategy is needed to re-energise development.

It is also important to note that the private sector is very important to the equitisation of state-owned enterprises and plans to move FDI flows into key sectors.

Upcoming support structures for business, such as the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership], highlight the need to improve the private sector’s performance and competitiveness to ensure that domestic firms equally benefit from their contents.

Therefore, recovering private business is a major goal at this time.

A broad range of measures have been taken by the government to improve the business environment. Are they working well?

This meeting comes at a time when there is relatively effective co-operation between government agencies to implement measures to support businesses in weathering the current economic storm.

I want to mention the prime minister’s New Year message on his resolutions and rigid requirements concerning the two-year programme to reform SOEs and also the government’s specific target expressed in Resolution 19/NQ-CP on measures to improve the business climate and enhance national competitiveness.

Correlative to this, a raft of laws related to investment and business activities are being revised, including the Enterprise Law, Investment Law, Law on Bankruptcy, and more.

The problem is how to effectively implement these laws and ensure they are followed.

When we collected input from enterprises’ for the meeting, we saw several proposals that businesses be able to take part in the law-making process and toward designing action plans to implement their requirements.

Can you elaborate on this?

According to the prime minister’s requirements, the VCCI collected input from businesses reporting on their relationships with government agencies and what difficulties they have faced.

We are working on selecting popular or common ideas in the proposal for action and are keeping a close watch over laws and decress relevant to business and investment activities tbat are currently being revised. The VCCI has proposed a programme to boost business and allow them to supervise and push implementation of targets set in Resolution 19 such as shortening the time needed for tax and customs procedures and boosting online government services.

On this we plan to report to the prime minister every three months.

Also from the input we get from enterprises, the VCCI is looking to develop indicators that help guide policy and departments involved in institutional reform.