Hung Yen province licensed 2,073 investment projects as of the end of 2021, including 1,570 domestic projects and 503 FDI projects, with a total registered capital of VND250,009 billion and US$6 billion. What do you think about this result?

Over the past years, Hung Yen province has constantly reformed investment promotion and attraction in various forms, strongly shifted from the so-called “opening the door” policy to the “knocking at the right door” policy in investment attraction. Beside publicity and transparency of preferential policies and prioritized investment projects announced on the websites of the province, departments and agencies, the province has also mobilized all resources to build the infrastructure system, especially transport infrastructure. The provincial government has also listened to the thoughts of investors and readily talked with them to solve their difficulties and problems in a timely manner, thus strengthening their confidence. Hung Yen has also focused on accelerating administrative reform, raising the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) and the Vietnam Provincial Governance and Satisfaction Index of Public Administrative Services (SIPAS). Thanks to these efforts, the province has achieved encouraging results in investment attraction. By the end of 2021, licensed investment projects totaled 2,073, including 1,570 domestic projects and 503 FDI projects, with a total registered capital of VND250,009 billion and VND6 billion. Among these projects, 1,444 are in operation, 142 are under construction, and 487 are being prepared for deployment.

Remarkably, direct investment projects have continuously expanded in number and value, helping accelerate structured transformation of economy, labor, employment and budget revenue while gradually forming key economic sectors such as electricity, electronics and auto parts. Domestic direct investment (DDI) projects of giant corporations have largely helped enhance competitiveness of local businesses. Foreign direct investment (FDI) projects that brought new technology and advanced management have contributed to promoting economic integration and sectoral development. However, shortcomings have been revealed in investment attraction, resulting in failure in meeting development requirements. Although there are many projects, their scale is small and not motivational. Especially, FDI inflows account for a low share. Many projects are mainly involved in processing and assembling which do not require core or source technology, have low impacts on others and have weak competence to connect with domestic enterprises.

To build Hung Yen into "a modern industrial province of high performance, rapid and sustainable development” as per the resolution of the 19th Provincial Party Congress (2020-2025 term), what tasks will the province carry out in the coming time? What are Hung Yen province’s investment attraction approaches?

In the 2015-2020 term, the Provincial Party Committee determined that “Focusing on attracting investment and developing advanced modern technology with high added value” is one of three development breakthrough stages. Since then, the province has invited, selected and prioritized large investment projects using environment-friendly advanced technology, generating high value-added products, joining global value chains and paying a lot to the local budget. Licensed projects are strongly directed to planned industrial zones. Basically, labor and land-intensive projects outside industrial zones are not encouraged.

In 2021 - 2025, adhering to the above policy, the province will focus on facilitating and prioritizing large-scale modern industrial parks; focus on attracting big investors, multinational corporations and leading firms in regional and global supply chains and giant industrial investment projects that use environmentally friendly advanced technology. Hung Yen has resolutely removed and terminated ineffective projects in industrial zones, projects in unsuitable locations and projects facing unsolvable difficulties and bottlenecks in site clearance and having business purposes unsuitable with the provincial development direction. The province will discourage low-value, labor- and land-intensive investment projects.

To concretize the above approach, the Provincial People's Committee announced a list of 119 investment attraction projects in six areas in the province in 2021 - 2025 (Decision 2246/QD-UBND dated September 28, 2021), including 17 agricultural projects with VND4,694 billion of total registered investment capital, four trade and service projects with VND2,500 billion; 59 urban housing projects with VND251,636 billion, and 14 industrial zone infrastructure development projects with VND31,685 billion.

How do you evaluate the Market Entry Index (in the PCI index) of Hung Yen province in recent years? What solutions will you adopt to improve the index in the coming time?

The Market Entry Index of the province has been quite high for years as compared to component indices. It reached 8.24 points in 2016; 7.35 points in 2017; 7.50 points in 2018; 6.18 points in 2019 and 7.81 points in 2020 and 6.78 points in 2021, often higher than many other component indicators. This result was attributed to the Department of Planning and Investment's good advice, coordination and implementation of many tasks and solutions, helping reduce the average settlement time of business registration documents from 2.12 days in 2016 to fewer than two working days now.

Dai An Urban Area in Hung Yen province

In order to further raise the score and rankings in the coming time, the department will advise on perfecting administrative processes and procedures, reducing cost and time of market entry. It will strive to bring this index score to the Top 45 group by 2023 and Top 40 by 2025, and send all business registration procedures online by 2025. Electronic registration documents are processed within two working days and their results are delivered within one working day from the date of receipt of documents. It will endeavor to settle 100% business registration documents online on time.

Business operation at an enterprise in Hung Yen province

Beside maintaining electronically automatic granting of corporate tax identification numbers; strengthening guidance for enterprises to carry out tax procedures after obtaining business registration to reduce the time of starting their business; and enabling 100% of businesses to declare and pay tax online, the department advised scaling up information technology application to online reception and settlement of administrative procedures of Level 3 and Level 4 and through public postal services; developed a coordination mechanism for authorities of tax, natural resources and environment to connect and share information and data on land management; and strived to reduce the waiting time for the issuance of the Land Use Right Certificate to a maximum of 15 days.

As an advisory body for the Project on Hung Yen Investment Attraction and Provincial Competitiveness Index Improvement in 2021 - 2025, with a vision to 2030 (PCI Project), would you be kind enough to describe how to raise the PCI Index and woo more investors to the province in the coming years?

In the past years, Hung Yen province has continuously adopted many solutions and actions to accelerate public administration reform at all three levels of government, with focus placed on raising publicity, transparency and simplicity of administrative procedures and improving public duties and work performance of public employees, to enhance management and administration capacity of authorities at all levels to build a government for people and businesses. The implementation of the PCI Project is a practical action to materialize the above determination and catch up with new development requirements. Based on project tasks and solutions, provincial and district-level agencies worked out and carried out specific plans, assigned responsible people, and periodically reported outcomes to the Provincial People's Committee.

In the coming time, with close and unified guidance plus drastic engagement of the Provincial Party Committee, the Provincial People’s Council, the Provincial People's Committee and all-tier authorities, Hung Yen will create new breakthroughs in investment attraction and PCI performance.

Thank you very much!