The painful problem that businesses are afraid of
Painful problem
The results of the survey on the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) 2021, announced by the Vietnam Federation of Trade and Industry (VCCI) on April 27, show that, unofficial expenses continued the downward trend in most of the areas of procedures related to enterprises. However, it still exists quite popular in some areas of State management.
Specifically, according to the survey results, the rate of enterprises paying informal expenses in 2021 is 41.4%, down from 44.9% in 2020. This is also the lowest level within 16 years. via. The scale of informal expenses has also decreased significantly, the proportion of enterprises spending more than 10% of revenue to pay this type of expense in 2021 is 4.1%, significantly lower than the figure of 9.1% of 2016.
The percentage of enterprises reporting that they have paid unofficial fees for inspection officers in 2021 is 20.9%, a significant decrease from 27.7% in 2020. The percentage of enterprises agreeing with the statement ” commission payment” is necessary to have a chance to win the bid has decreased from 40% in 2020 to 36.8% in 2021. The proportion of enterprises concerned about the situation of “running the case” should not bring the dispute over. Courts have also decreased by 1.6%, from 23% in 2020. The proportion of enterprises paying informal fees to speed up land procedures in 2021 decreased to 29.4%, compared with 32%. of 2020.
FDI enterprises participating in the survey also said that in 2021, 41.9% will not have to pay unofficial costs. This is the most positive number since 2010.
However, in some areas, the informal costs that enterprises have to pay are still very high. The phenomenon of corruption when handling procedures for businesses is common” is 57.4% in 2021, higher than 54.1% in 2019-2020. The average rate of enterprises paying unofficial costs in construction inspection activities is 67.22% and the granting of conditional business licenses is 61.36%.
Considering the nature of interaction between enterprises and state agencies, small-scale informal charges, also known as “petty corruption”, are still quite common in two forms: The firstwhich is the “lubricant” cost in essential public services with activities such as business registration or land access; Second is the unofficial cost of procedures or operations such as market management, environmental inspection, tax, fire prevention and fighting inspection, land inspection and business registration.
For FDI enterprises, in 2021, 5% said that they had to spend 5-10% of revenue on unofficial expenses, while the previous year this figure was only 2.1%. In some areas, informal payment of fees is still high, such as: import and export procedures 38.9%; inspection, inspection 25.4% and land procedures 21.1%.
Notably, the informal cost of settling land procedures for FDI enterprises in 2021 increased sharply compared to 10.3% in 2020. This figure is consistent with the increase in the proportion of enterprises reporting problems. Ha in implementing land administrative procedures in the PCI report.
Another important point is that up to 60.4% of enterprises share, the work is solved as expected after paying unofficial costs. Thus, the ability to predict work results when there is a “lining of the hand” increases significantly. The benefit of this is that businesses can predict the costs to spend, to pay unofficial costs. But its consequence will be an increasingly systematic and transactional informal payment of fees.
Opportunity to harass businesses
According to economic experts, unofficial costs are considered a burden and reduce the competitiveness of enterprises in Vietnam. This cost is accounted into the product cost, pushing up the product price, resulting in reduced competitiveness. This is the most difficult and costly problem for businesses. Not to mention other additional costs. For example, to legalize unofficial expenses, enterprises will have to spend more money, leading to fraudulent business phenomena such as bill trading; Financial reporting, tax dishonesty…
Mr. Dau Anh Tuan, Head of the Legal Department of VCCI, said that the production costs of Vietnamese enterprises can completely compete with enterprises in other countries. But the unofficial costs incurred in carrying out the relevant administrative procedures make Vietnamese products much less competitive. As such, its impact is very clear, very obvious and very large.
Informal costs are not only increasing compliance costs but are making business environment become unhealthy, less competitive and cause fear for businesses that want to do business and compete fairly in Vietnam.
The main reason, according to Mr. Dau Anh Tuan, is the poor quality of the legal and institutional system. The system of legal regulations and administrative procedures is unclear, unreasonable, complicated and unpredictable, creating opportunities for relevant agencies and officials to harass businesses and demand illegal costs. awake. Along with that, the law enforcement is not strict, fair, transparent or takes advantage of the position of the staff assigned to harass enterprises.
The results of the above informal cost survey show that there is still a lot of room for reform. Minimizing informal costs remains a “long journey” for local governments. Stronger efforts need to be continued to reduce the informal cost burden for enterprises.
In order to eliminate unofficial costs, it is necessary to make all procedures public and transparent, and to put e-government into operation soon. In fact, the groups of administrative procedures that have made significant progress in recent years are all thanks to the application of information technology, carried out in the electronic environment.
Tran Thuy
The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) has just announced the provincial competitiveness ranking (PCI) 2018. Accordingly, more than half of enterprises said they were still being harassed and had to be lubricated.
at Blogtuan.info – Source: vietnamnet.vn – Read the original article here
