The workshop on partnering with businesses on regulatoryreforms to enhance competitiveness is the first to implement arecently-issued Resolution on improving the business environment andnational competitiveness during the 2015-16 period.
Mostparticipants at the workshop agreed with the need to establish publicprivate partnerships to help strengthen the participation of Vietnam'sbusiness community in regulatory reforms.
Vu Tien Loc, Chairmanof the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and DeputyChairman of the Consultative Council for Administrative ProcedureReform, said businesses would play a key role in that process.
Theimprovement of national competitiveness depended on many factors but itwas particularly important to build a transparent regulation to create afavourable business environment and to build a strong businesscommunity in which businesses could play a key role in the economy.
Inorder to promote the participation of businesses in regulatory reforms,it was essential to develop and to implement programmes aimed atimproving the capacity of business associations which would then help toimprove capacity, particularly among small-and medium-sized businesses,he said.
He stressed that businesses should regularly proposeand respond to information from the Government via different channelssuch as associations and the VCCI.
Challenges and shortcomings inbusiness activities they reported will be very important to helpaccelerate regulatory reforms, thus creating a more favourable businessenvironment, he said.
Associations played a key role in theseissues, so Vietnam will increase support for them to help them assistthe business community, he added.
Participants alsosaid the VCCI and hundreds of business associations needed to improvetheir operation capacity, and increase studies and surveys to assessquality of the implementation of administrative procedures in order togive recommendations to the Government.
The VCCI should also work with relevant agencies to collect opinions from businesses on new policies, they said.
The United States Agency of International Development (USAID)'sAssistant Administrator for Asia Jonathan Stivers said while new lawsand regulations, trade agreement commitments and commitment to reform byGovernments were all essential ingredients of effective efforts toimprove the business environment, but only when they were complementedwith partnerships with the private sector could they be successfullytransformed into effective institutional arrangements that enhancedcompetitiveness.
Representing the businesscommunity, Secretary General of the Vietnam Textile and ApparelAssociation Dang Phuong Dung said: "We really want to improve thebusiness environment because we have to compete with domestic businessesand also those from around the region and the world at large."
Vice Chairman of the National Assembly's Law Committee Le Minh Thongsaid regulatory reforms should not only focus on building and issuinglegal documents, but also on how they were implemented.
He stressed that the business community determined the destiny of regulations issued by the State.
On this occasion, the VCCI and the General Department of Customslaunched the 2015 Customs and Tax Satisfaction Survey, an initiative toraise the voice of businesses in regulatory reforms for tradefacilitation.-VNA