Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue on August 1 asked ministries to speed up the connection of administrative procedures under their management to the national single window (NSW) as the work remains slow.

Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue speaks at the meeting on August 1.
(Photo: VNA)

During the meeting of the National Steering Committee for ASEAN Single Window, National Single Window, and Trade and Logistics Facilitation (Committee 1899) in Hanoi, Finance Minister Dinh Tien Dung reported that 174 administrative procedures of 13 ministries have been connected to the NSW so far.

Among them, the Ministry of Transport (MoT) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) have met the Government’s roadmap, with the MoT having 87 administrative procedures connected and the MST with six.

However, it will be hard for the ministries to complete the connection of 61 other administrative procedures in 2019 as per the Government’s plan because by the end of July, only 16 procedures were connected to the NSW.

From now until the end of this year, the ministries need to connect another 45 procedures to the NSW, of which the Ministry of Health has 14 procedures, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development 12 procedures and the Ministry of Defense 8 procedures. The three ministries account for up to 75 percent of the procedures that must be connected from now until the end of 2019.

Hue directed ministries and agencies to speed up the process of reviewing procedures and developing information technology systems and related solutions to meet the connections of 61 procedures to the NSW.

At the meeting, Dung reported that regarding the ASEAN Single Window deployment and connectivity outside ASEAN, Vietnam has officially exchanged certificate of origin (C/O) information with six countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei and Cambodia.

As of July 10 this year, the total number of Vietnamese C/O received from countries is 87,355 while the country sent 153,872 C/Os to other countries.

At the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Hue also said the reduction of the list of goods under specialised management and inspection is still limited, failing to meet the Government’s requirements. Currently, only 15 percent of goods under specialised inspection were removed from the list, while the National Assembly's target is to cut from 15 to 35 percent.

Hue attributed the failure to the fact that some ministries and agencies were slow in issuing circulars to implement the regulations.

He asked the ministries to continually implement reforms with import and export goods in the spirit of trade facilitation but also strengthen trade fraud prevention as mentioned in the Government’s Decision 824/QD-TTg 2019 on strengthening State management against trade and origin frauds.

Referring to the fact that logistics costs of firms account for 20 percent of the country’s GDP and the contribution of the logistics sector to GDP accounts for just 4-5 percent, Deputy Prime Minister required relevant ministries to strengthen the contribution of this industry and reduce logistics costs for firms.

Hue assigned the Ministry of Industry and Trade, in conjunction with other relevant ministries, to study and evaluate the country’s development plans of logistics services in a move to increase competitiveness and develop the services sector to 2025 with its contribution to GDP at 8-10 percent and an annual growth rate of 14-20 percent.