It is essential to double-check complex legal documents that have caused difficulties to businesses to help them and other people to boost economic development.

According to researchers and economic experts, institutional reforms aim to gradually turn purely administrative institutions into economic institutions and remove State management from production and business management.

State management agencies should focus on dealing with more important issues such as legislation, strategies and policies while facilitating business and production operations, reducing the State’s investment in economic establishments and enhancing community-based activities.

6,000 inappropriate documents need abolishing

The Deputy Head of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), Nguyen Dinh Cung said that Vietnam should re-examine outdated and overlapping legislation and streamline cumbersome procedures for people involved in business and  production activities.

At the moment, as many as 6,000 inappropriate and overlapping documents should be abolished, such as those relating to business registration permits, import-export procedures, customs procedures, certificates for urban land use rights and foreign investment permits.

An international consultant, Scott Jacobs, said that the legal system is an interface between management agencies and law enforcers. Vietnam could be spending 25 percent of its GDP on unnecessary legal documents while for other countries, it costs for just 5-10 percent of GDP.

Reform is needed

According to senior economic expert Le Dang Doanh, after the global financial crisis, Vietnam will need to pay more attention to create a stable economic environment, mobilize internal strengths, cope with a reduction in foreign investment and ensure people’s welfare for economic growth. “The core of the issue is still formalities and human resources”, said Mr Doanh.

Mr Jacob pointed out that the RoK had successfully carried out institutional reforms. After escaping the worst of the crisis, the RoK has reached a strong economic growth rate, which is better than in the previous years. The core of its rapid development is administrative reform. Within less than a year, more than 6,000 documents were abolished and the RoK continues to implement reforms to improve administrative formalities.

Regarding the quality of legal documents, Chu Son Ha, a NA deputy from Hanoi stated that NA deputies have had little time to give their opinions on the documents. This is just one of the reasons, why we have to amend our laws so frequently.

Another reason is that there is no a standard criteria for compiling legal documents. Mr Cung said that it is necessary to set up a standard system when issuing new legislation.

8 criteria to assess the quality of legal documents

-          Transparency, name of articles

-          Scale of application

-          The subject for application

-          The language of documents

-          Forecasts

-          Overlapping

-          Compatibility

-         Authority to solve problems

(Source:VOVNews)