It is necessary to accelerate business environment reform and practical implementation to strengthen trust and create business motivation for businesses. Illustration photo: PHAM HUNG

The inadequacy lasted for nearly 7 years

Sharing about the difficulties businesses are facing in implementing regulations and administrative procedures, representing businesses in the food industry, Ms. Ly Kim Chi, Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Food Association, said. As you know, one of the regulations that has the longest and most severe impact on food businesses is the problem in Decree 09/2016/ND-CP of the Government on fortifying micronutrients in food. This inadequacy has persisted for nearly 7 years, since 2017 until now, and businesses in the food industry have been enduring many difficulties and losses every day from the mandatory requirement of all Enterprises must add iodine to salt and iron and zinc to flour used in food processing. This requirement goes against the principles of risk management, is not in accordance with the recommendations of the World Health Organization, is ineffective and not internationally consistent; In particular, this regulation even endangers health by forcing all people with enough or excess micronutrients to eat foods supplemented with micronutrients, causing costs and many difficulties for food production and processing enterprises.

In Resolution No. 19-2018/NQ-CP dated May 15, 2018, the Government directed the Ministry of Health to research, amend and supplement Decree 09 in the direction of: abolishing the regulation "salt used in food processing must be fortified with iodine" and repeal the regulation "Wheat flour used in food processing must be fortified with iron and zinc". Instead, only food processing enterprises should be encouraged to use it. On June 26, 2018, the Ministry of Health issued Plan No. 618 amending Decree 09, but to date, the Ministry of Health has not yet implemented the amendment of this Decree.

“The Ministry of Health's delay and prolongation of the amendment has caused businesses a lot of losses, not only in money and time, but in many cases the loss of export markets, affecting their competitiveness of an industry. For the food industry, if there is not a uniform and consistent legal policy from the Government to support domestic businesses to reduce pressure and develop with peace of mind, we are afraid that we will lose a lot when the trend changes. This direction of transfer and cooperation will increase in the coming time," added the Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City Food Association.

Therefore, the Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City Food Association said that it is time to change the way of implementing reforms, add more monitoring mechanisms, handle those who carry out institutional reforms, and improve the national business environment to create breakthrough results. Because in reality, the regulations on civil service discipline and the responsibilities of heads of ministries and branches in carrying out tasks assigned by the Government and the Prime Minister are still quite superficial and not specific, leading to many inadequate and negative regulations huge impact on businesses. Although the Government has directed the handling for many years, up to now, this situation still persists and has not been completely resolved.

There needs to be specific instructions soon

From the perspective of businesses, Mr. Dau Anh Tuan, Deputy Secretary General, Head of the Legal Department of the Vietnam Confederation of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) added that in many fields of industry, the problems that businesses respond to are: light has not been considered. Even in the process of reviewing and reducing current documents, there is a phenomenon of re-drafting documents adding new barriers.

Citing the above issue, according to Mr. Dau Anh Tuan, a series of businesses oppose the regulations declaring conformity of veterinary drug products because it causes a huge burden on business costs, while management efficiency is not great, not effective to helps control the quality of veterinary drugs and does not comply with international practices. However, up to now, the Law on Standards and Technical Regulations is still pending revision. Or in the field of transportation, Decree 10/2020/NQ-CP dated January 17, 2020 regulating business and conditions for transport business by car requires contract passenger transport enterprises to provide At least the content of the transportation contract is sent to the Department of Transport by email before each trip. However, every day businesses have hundreds of trips, requiring the above information to create huge compliance costs. From the management agency's perspective, it is also difficult to manage when receiving hundreds of emails every day.

The representative of the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (AmCham) also recommended that management agencies need to soon have specific instructions to implement Resolution 02 into life. For example, on the issue of implementing extended producer responsibility (EPR), Resolution 02/NQ-CP clearly states that businesses are allowed to combine both self-recycling and payment of recycling support in same year for the same type of packaging and discarded products; Pay recycling contributions on the basis of settlement according to the actual amount at the end of the year and the payment deadline is the end of the first quarter of the following year; Management agencies are responsible for researching and proposing preferential policies for environmentally friendly packaging or using recycled materials... But up to this point, there are still no implementation instructions to eliminate Resolve EPR problems for businesses according to the drastic spirit proposed by the Government.