In an interview with Sai Gion Giai Phong Newspaper, President of the HCMC Institute for Development Studies (HIDS) Tran Hoang Ngan said that Ho Chi Minh City identified 2021 as the year to build urban administration and improve the investment environment. City's leaders do not accept the situation that the competitiveness is not high, especially when the private sector accounts for 70 percent of investment resources, but administrative procedures have hindered investors. Subsequently, city administrators decided to take various solutions to better the situation.
Accordingly, after 15 working days, if an agency does not reply in writing, it must be responsible for the relevant contents in accordance with the Working Regulations of Decision No. 63 of the municipal People's Committee dated on December 23, 2016.
City leaders should study how to reduce at least 30 percent of time to handle enterprises’ petitions compared to the current process of agencies. The city strives that over 80 percent of land registration office branches will handle 96 percent administrative documents on time with a yearly increase of 1 percent.
Moreover, over 60 percent of administrative procedures will be provided online. Agencies and organizations such as the Department of Planning and Investment, the Department of Finance, the Department of Planning and Architecture, the Department of Construction, the Department of Natural Resources and Environment, which directly solve online public services to remove obstacles of enterprises must take the lead in administrative reform and improve the investment environment.
For high efficiency, in addition to solutions, responsible agencies will perform post-inspection and sanctioning on local authorities that have not performed well.
Currently, the municipal People's Committee has assigned specialized agencies, including the HCMC Development Research Institute to conduct an independent investigation to propose a solution.
Plus, the southern metropolis will accelerate the construction of e-government, promote digital transformation, build an electronic data platform, and upgrade public services for information transparency, the process of handling documents with businesses, people in the upcoming time. The government has also invested in providing online public services to minimize contact between officials and the people.
First of all, departments must respect the prescribed time to process the records of people and businesses. Ho Chi Minh City is implementing Politburo’s Conclusion 14 on linking the responsibility of leaders of government agencies with the effectiveness of administrative procedure reform, in order to promote change. However, it must be acknowledged that the institutions, procedures and provisions of the law still have many problems and inadequacies.
President of the HCMC Institute for Development Studies (HIDS) Tran Hoang Ngan
As for the overlap in management between ministerial and local levels, the city has proposed to the Prime Minister to step up decentralization for localities. The Prime Minister supported and emphasized the point of promoting decentralization for localities.
As for Ho Chi Minh City, where one third of the country's businesses are currently operating, so the overload sometimes causes departments and districts to process business records slowly, not necessarily negatively. In order to improve this problem, over the past time, the city has had to strongly decentralize management to the districts to improve the above situation.
The city needs to set up a working group that will support businesses in completing administrative procedures. Currently, in many countries, governments help businesses in completing all procedures.
In the near future, Ho Chi Minh City will implement this approach to districts. Accordingly, investors only need to notify public authorities, the public administration departments will implement procedures and support businesses. The city needs to effectively promote the role of district economic departments to strengthen support for businesses to quickly settle administrative procedures.
