More concrete actions needed for true breakthrough

For businesses, the new points in Resolution No.66-NQ/TW and Resolution No.68-NQ/TW are apparent. However, from awareness to concrete action is a process that requires the participation of all levels of government.

Firstly, Resolution 68 clearly states that each enterprise will only be inspected once a year if necessary. However, we believe that if an agency coordinating the inspection and examination work is not specified, there will still be overlapping inspections of enterprises.

For example, tax authorities, land management authorities, construction and planning authorities, fire prevention and fighting authorities, and others can all inspect real estate businesses. So which agency will coordinate the inspection work so that businesses only have such an inspection once a year?

Ministries and sectors are independent of each other, not to mention local authorities can also request to inspect businesses. This is an issue that we really hope to have resolved, helping businesses move ahead, because one inspection takes a lot of time.

Secondly, regarding institutions and the legal system, this is an issue that construction and real estate businesses in particular still see many obstacles, although the National Assembly has recently passed various laws to remove difficulties for the market.

In the process of applying new laws, the government has issued decrees and circulars with specific instructions, but some documents have provisions that are not really reasonable and accurate when applied to specific cases. For example, Decree No.103/2024/ND-CP on instructions for collecting land use fees for enterprises is still inappropriate because when valuating land prices, enterprises are not allowed to participate, but when the valuation is slow, enterprises have to pay additional fees.

We find this an amount of money is extremely unreasonable, and we hope that the prime minister will resolve this issue.

In addition, there are other decrees, such as those related to bidding, which are unreasonable, so businesses find it very difficult to apply. Therefore, we recommend that legal documents, before being issued, need to have specific comments from experts and directly affected subjects. The quality of documents needs to be strictly checked because amending a document causes a lot of waste for businesses in terms of both time and money.

Meanwhile, Resolution 68 requires enterprises to be service objects instead of management objects. This is an issue that enterprises are very interested in and highly support. However, how to change those words in the implementation document needs a revolution in thinking and awareness for our civil servants today.

To perform this perspective, we recommend that every six months, localities should hold meetings with businesses making local investment, production, and trading in specific industries to provide feedback to state authorities on administrative procedures that need to be learned from, and changes in management and operation.

In terms of the simplification of administrative procedures, there are two main steps. Firstly, it is necessary to reduce legal procedures in the steps of business investment, for example, cutting down on investment licensing and adjusting construction permit planning. For procedures that cannot be eliminated, it is necessary to specify the management method, digitise the implementation method, and have a specific time and address of responsibility.

Particularly in real estate investment, there needs to be an agency that unifies mandatory procedures and simplifies the investment process to guide businesses in implementation.

In addition, in the context of the country preparing to implement key national projects and works such as the high-speed railway project, we would like to see some changes, including abolishing the detailed unit price system and building a general unit price for a product as the world is currently doing.

This is necessary, especially allowing contractors to fully develop their capacity in construction.

In the context of large projects requiring enormous resources, the entire construction industry expects the prime minister to allow a mechanism of placing or appointing conditional contractors to have enough time to prepare personnel, vehicles, and equipment, as well as technology.

Regarding training, the majority of Vietnamese contractors are currently small- and medium-sized ones, so they face difficulties in training. Therefore, there needs to be a public-private coordination mechanism in training to meet the needs of the construction industry’s workforce.