Party and government agencies to slim down

The agency streamlining will allow the Party to better serve the public

Those organisations to be retained include the Central Party Committee Office and the committees for foreign affairs, people, propaganda, inspection, and organisation. Among these, the Committee for Propaganda will be formed by merging the existing Committee for Science and Education and the Committee for Ideology and Culture. The Party admits that, although restructure of both Party and other state and government agencies has been a decade long process, the organisation is “still bulky and ineffective with low quality operation on the part of state cadre.
[We have to] get rid of bureaucracy, overlapping roles and responsibilities [among party and state offices] to make their structure more streamline and effective, the plenum report stated. At the fourth plenum, the Central Party Committee also discussed preparations for the upcoming National Assembly election, which will then appoint the government cabinet. Final decision has yet to be made on the new structure of government, but a source close to the process revealed that a number of ministries and state agencies would be cut back through mergers with other ministries to cut down on overlapping work. For example, the General Statistics Office will be merged into Ministry of Planning and Investment and the Ministry of Construction will possibly be merged into the Ministry of Industry.
Vietnam currently has 26 ministries to deal with various fields from foreign affairs to home affairs, construction, industry, trade, education, labour, healthcare and defence.
Former minister of Planning and Investment Tran Xuan Gia said that one of the major tasks for the immediate future should be to cut down on the overlaps between these ministries, Central Party committees, and lower level departments, which impact on the business community and the public.
He explained that in order to achieve the goal of administrative reform, the government must pay proper attention to restructuring institutions toward more streamlined and effective operation.
Any macro reform will cause some problems. However, the country’s leaders must take on the responsibility for that. “It takes time to reform state mechanisms, but we should not put it off from year to year”, Gia stressed.
He said that global integration is going well and provides good foundation for reforms. Final discussion for government restructuring will be held during the Central Party Committee’s fifth plenum, which is expected to be held before the National Assembly election.



No. 798/January 29 - February 4, 2007