Sublicense eradication: 'If the Government fails, we will lose out'

Sub-licenses have become a burden for enterprises. Even though the sub-licenses elimination has progressed for years, no positive result has been found due to both subjective and objective reasons.

TheLEADER had a talk with Phan Duc Hieu, Vice President of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM).

How has CIEM conducted the responsibility for the overhaul and elimination of sub-licenses assigned by the government?

Phan Duc Hieu: CIEM has two main duties including eliminating unreasonable business conditions and controlling the quality of the newly announced ones in order to avoid the return of the eliminated conditions.

In order to complete these duties, a set of evaluation criteria must be formed to define effective business conditions as well as eliminate the unreasonable ones, avoiding unnecessary controversies. The measures to control the quality of new conditions must also be proposed, which has become the target and also the challenge of the resolution that would be built by the Ministry of Planning and Investment and CIEM.

What is the reason for the situation that new business conditions are formed after the old ones have been eliminated?

Phan Duc Hieu: After the period from 2000 to 2001 when hundreds of sub-licenses were eliminated, new sub-licenses were formed or the eliminated ones returned under the new forms. In terms of the subjective reason, the related departments have not changed their thinking of managing and making law when regulating the conditional business.

In terms of objective reason, the government currently has no effective control mechanism to ensure the quality of promulgated regulations. The overhaul of business conditions is still implemented by the ministries and departments themselves, forming the conflict of interest. The overhaul has also been not effective as the government has just assigned to eliminate unnecessary conditions without setting any specific targets.

Ministries and departments need to be more active and determined in conducting the campaign.

What does the government should do to successfully eliminate the unreasonable business conditions?

Phan Duc Hieu: We have proposed that the government need to change the way of overhauling the business conditions. Accordingly, three government departments that are assigned would collaborate to overhaul the business conditions.The process of elimination and promulgation of the new resolution on business conditions must be completed by this year, which would be very tough due to the behavior of related parties.

If the government cannot change, ministries and departments must be assigned to cut the unnecessary conditions by themselves instead and propose the new form of management. If there is a failure in this campaign, Vietnam would lose its chance as a new campaign could only be launched after next three to five years.