Reform to bring Vietnam's investment environment into the world's top 30

Businesses need a transparent environment and simpler procedures

Recently, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) sent comments on the Draft Decree detailing a number of articles of the Law on E-commerce. According to VCCI, many contents in the draft are still overlapping and unclear, which may increase compliance costs and hinder business operations if not adjusted appropriately.

For example, Article 39 of the draft stipulates the request for the Ministry of Public Security's appraisal opinion for foreign investors when applying for or adjusting business licenses in the field of e-commerce. According to VCCI, this regulation is not consistent with the 2025 Investment Law and guiding documents for implementation. Adding a separate appraisal step in the draft not only causes overlap but also gives rise to unnecessary procedures.

The above is just a very basic example of how there are still many procedures that need to be simplified. From the business perspective, in an exchange with Lao Dong Newspaper, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu - General Director of Anh Kim Food Production Joint Stock Company (AK Food) - said: "There are regulations that businesses do not know how to do, both completing procedures and being affected by business plans. Eliminating inappropriate procedures will help businesses be more proactive in production activities. When businesses have invested and put products on the market, responsibility for product quality and safety is inevitable. Therefore, formal regulations, if they continue to exist, will not only waste time but also hinder the actual operation of businesses.

Similarly, Mr. Hoang Xuan Hai - Business Director of ISP Security Company - also commented: Solutions and procedures need to be designed in a simple and accessible direction. In addition, it is necessary to strengthen specific guidance and direct support so that businesses and people can deploy quickly and effectively.

Request accelerators

At a working session with the Ministry of Construction on implementing the reduction and simplification of administrative procedures and business conditions according to Conclusion No. 18-KL/TW on April 17, Politburo Member, Standing Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Tuc emphasized: "The Government is drastically directing the reduction of administrative procedures and business conditions, especially for ministries and sectors with many procedures and business conditions; and at the same time requesting to promote decentralization and promote the role of ministries and sectors in promoting economic growth.

Previously, according to the direction of the Politburo Member, Prime Minister Le Minh Hung requested that before April 20, ministries must submit plans to reduce administrative procedures and business conditions.

A "wave" of administrative procedure reform is taking place strongly in ministries and sectors. At the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the review and reduction are quite clearly shown. According to the newly issued decision, a series of procedures have been amended, supplemented and abolished, especially in fields directly related to production and business activities such as printing, performing arts, karaoke business, nightclubs...

The abolition of printing operation licensing procedures at both central and local levels shows that the trend of shifting from pre-inspection to post-inspection is becoming increasingly clear.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment also reported that it has cut more than 51% of the time to resolve administrative procedures and more than 52% of compliance costs compared to 2024, exceeding the target set by the Government.

Not stopping there, the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment also proposed to cut 12/40 conditional business lines, while narrowing the scope to 6 other industries. In total, after 2 years of implementation, up to 44% of business investment conditions have been simplified.

Notably, the review of 650 administrative procedures with a total processing time of more than 16,000 days and compliance costs of nearly 10,000 billion VND shows how large the "procedure burden" was before. The reduction of thousands of processing days and thousands of billions of VND in costs is a significant step forward.

The Ministry of Ethnic Minorities and Religious Affairs, although the number of procedures is not large (58 procedures), also committed to continuing to cut time and implementation costs by up to 50%.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Construction - a sector that is considered to have "many licenses" - is also implementing strong cuts. It is expected to abolish and decentralize 70 procedures, while simplifying 157 procedures, reducing about 20% of processing time and 18% of compliance costs.

Conclusion No. 18-KL/TW of the Central Government has set out the requirement "Promoting administrative procedure reform; standardizing and digitizing the entire process of resolving procedures in a digital environment, interconnecting and sharing data between agencies; minimizing compliance time and costs for people and businesses".

This is a key requirement in strongly improving the investment and business environment. The reality over the years shows that administrative procedure reform has always been mentioned as a priority, but the effectiveness is not even. There are many cases of "reducing paperwork procedures, increasing procedures in practice".

Therefore, Conclusion 18-KL/TW emphasizes the requirement to reduce substance, not form. This means that it is necessary to comprehensively review regulations, boldly abolish procedures that are no longer appropriate, especially business conditions of the "sub-licenses" nature.

It should be emphasized that another important point in Conclusion 18-KL/TW is to promote decentralization and delegation of power, ensuring that the ministry level only performs no more than 30% of the total number of administrative procedures. This not only helps reduce the burden on the Central level, but also brings public services closer to people and businesses.

Bringing Vietnam's investment environment into the top 3 ASEAN countries and top 30 in the world by 2028 is a big goal, but not impossible. For Vietnam, the advantage is political stability, market size and favorable geo-economic location. But to turn the advantage into real attraction, a transparent, favorable and low-cost business environment is needed, in which administrative procedure reform, digitization and reduction of compliance costs are important "levers", creating a modern and efficient administration.

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