Urgently abolish unnecessary business conditions

Accordingly, as required, ministries and branches will have to proactively research, review, and propose to remove from the list of conditional business lines those lines that can be subject to more effective management measures. At the same time, ministries and branches must review and propose to abolish unnecessary, unfeasible, unclear, difficult to determine, and impractical business conditions; abolish unnecessary certificates, and reduce duplicate certificates. This task must be completed in the second quarter of 2024.

After many years, the demand to abolish business conditions is hot again with specific criteria and deadlines, although reviewing to abolish business conditions is always present in the annual tasks assigned by the Government and the Prime Minister to ministries, branches and localities in resolutions on improving the business environment.

Once again, the picture of conditional business lines and business conditions will be drawn in detail.

It should also be mentioned that, up to now, the number of conditional business lines listed in Appendix IV of the Investment Law is 227. Compared to the 267 business lines in this List of the Investment Law 2014 and the 243 business lines in the List of the Investment Law 2016, the number of business lines has decreased significantly. It can be said that this is a very positive result of the general review of regulations related to conditional business lines and business conditions in 2016-2017.

Along with the reduction in quantity, the study of business conditions is more convenient and easier to follow because the business conditions of many industries are gathered in a consolidated document, in the decree regulating business conditions under the state management of ministries and branches, or expressed through specific provisions named "business conditions" in legal documents are also of interest. Business conditions that are generally regulated, unclear or deeply interfere with the business activities of enterprises have been significantly reduced.

However, in reality, it is difficult to confirm whether the number of business conditions has actually been reduced compared to before. If the List of the Investment Law is considered as the “parent industry”, then specialized legal documents are further divided into “child industries” and “grandchild industries”. Therefore, the number of conditional business industries in reality is several times higher. For example, out of 34 conditional business industries in the field of agriculture and rural development, there are up to 22 industries (parent industries) containing “child and grandchild industries” expressed in specialized legal documents.

Another example in the field of state management of culture - sports and tourism is "Accommodation service business". The Investment Law only stipulates 1 parent industry, but according to specialized laws (Tourism Law 2017), accommodation services include 8 sub-industries...

Furthermore, according to the Enterprise Law and Investment Law, business conditions must be stipulated in documents from the decree level and above. However, through review, it is shown that many business conditions are integrated into technical regulations, at the circular level issued by ministries and branches...

Obviously, the complexity and lack of clarity of conditional business lines and business conditions are caused by ministries, branches and localities, especially when licensing, granting certificates of eligibility for business, and controlling compliance with business conditions are opportunities to create a mechanism of asking and giving; but there are also causes from the ineffective mechanism of controlling the issuance of business conditions. Even the mechanism of responsibility and sanctions for ministries and branches that propose to issue poor quality business conditions, causing losses in costs for businesses and society, although mentioned, are not clear and difficult to implement.

It must also be added that the way the state manages business conditions is quite heavy on detecting and finding errors to handle violations, not focusing on guiding businesses to implement, causing businesses to consider business conditions as barriers, rather than necessary requirements in management to ensure the common interests of society...

Changing this situation is urgent.