Comprehensive reform of the business environment to support enterprises' recovery. Photo: H.Diu

Although Vietnam's economic growth rate in the first quarter of 2023 was proof that difficulties from the world economy had brought many negative impacts, from the perspective of international enterprises, Mr Cranwell, General Manager of the Americas and Regional Director of Americas Corporate Customers, Standard Chartered Bank still believed in Vietnam's prospects with its strategic position as a gateway into markets of other developing countries, abundant and skilled labour resources, competitive labour costs and many preferential policies. Specifically, although Apple did not have a factory in Vietnam, there were 31 companies with 160,000 workers manufacturing and assembling components for Apple products in Vietnam. In addition, other technology companies, such as Intel Corporation, were also planning to increase investment in Vietnam.

He also said that many challenges were still solved. Accordingly, Vietnam should improve infrastructure, especially ports, transport infrastructure and the capacity of the logistics industry to maintain growth. In addition, Vietnam's dependence on raw materials from China might affect the diversification efforts of enterprises because production might be disrupted if supply from China was reduced or interrupted.

Meanwhile, with domestic enterprises, the story of improving the business environment is always mentioned. In sharing at the Seminar "VITV - Dialogue: Support for Vietnamese Enterprises to overcome difficulties," Ms Pham Thi Ngoc Thuy, Director of the Office of the Research and Development Board of the Private Economy (Board IV) of the Prime Minister's administrative reform Advisory Council said that Vietnamese enterprises were facing financial difficulties, along with the broken supply chain, a decrease of consumer demand, which also greatly affected output and export-import activities.

In such a context, Ms Thuy also pointed out that implementing policies to support enterprise was still slow, or many processes and procedures made enterprises not know how to deploy.

"Many authorities seem to have no interaction with enterprises, while business activities depend a lot on the legal framework and instructions from the authorities. Therefore, Vietnamese enterprises are quite embarrassed to face the new requirements of the market", said Ms Pham Thi Ngoc Thuy.

Taking an example of this comment, a representative of Board IV said that international partners were making many requirements related to a green economy and sustainable development in the management, production and export of enterprises. However, enterprises did not know where to get information from or lacked guidance on technical measures to help them keep pace with this trend.

Or recently, a problem that enterprises are most concerned about is the difficulty in accessing capital. According to enterprises, in the current period, "one piece when hungry is worth a whole loaf when full", but implementing policies to support and facilitate capital for enterprises still faces many obstacles. For example, the implementation of Decree No. 31/2022/ND-CP on interest rate support from the State budget for loans of enterprises, cooperatives and business households is still quite slow compared to demand, partly because enterprises are still hesitant about inspection and examination after receiving interest rate support, but partly because the regulation on support conditions for "having the resilient ability" is still unclear.

Mr Pham Dinh Doan, Chairman of Phu Thai Group, said that banks carefully consider business plans, but the business plan would not be feasible in the context of high market prices and reduced orders.

Obviously, the stories of enterprises always revolve around improving the business investment environment, improving access to capital, and solving financial problems for them. Economic expert Dr Nguyen Dinh Cung commented that reforming the business environment was considered a key to overcoming this period, but this work was stalled, so a comprehensive institutional reform was required to create a breakthrough for development. In addition, he also emphasized the importance of fiscal and monetary policies to support enterprises' recovery and then to solve the problem of public investment to open up business opportunities for the related sectors