Responded by units: The Ministry of Finance; the Ministry of Construction and the Ministry of Justice

Official letter: 6117/BTC-CST; 1036/BXD - PC; 1574/BTP - VĐCXDPL, dated: 2017-05-11

Responded contents:

1. Regarding the implementation of the Resolution 35 and the Resolution 19

Immediately after the Government issued the Resolution No. 35 / NQ-CP, the Ministry of Finance has proactively promulgated the Action Plan with 46 specific tasks (for the period 2016-2020 according to the Resolution of the Government). By the end of April 2017, 33/46 tasks have been completed, the remaining tasks are progressing according to schedule.

From 2014 onwards, every year, the Government issues Resolution No. 19 / NQ-CP on major tasks and solutions to improve the business environment and enhance national competitiveness. In order to implement, every year the Ministry of Finance shall promptly issue an action plan for implementation with specific solutions. For example, the plan of  2016 included 73 solutions and 118 specific tasks; In 2017, the Ministry of Finance's Action Plan includes 87 solutions and is concretized into 175 specific tasks.

The Ministry of Finance's action plans for the implementation of the Government’s Resolution have clearly stipulated the responsibilities of lead agencies that should facilitate the urge and the assurance of timely implementation and processing arisen problems.

2. Regarding assuring requirements are clear and easy to apply, to avoid the sectoral benefits when issuing documents.

This is also required in Article 8 of the Law on the Promulgation of Legal Documents in 2015. For the Ministry of Finance, in the process of drafting legal documents, apart from strictly implementation of the Law, always address the language requirements and drafting techniques by strengthening the implementation of the board appraisal process to ensure that financial policies and legislation are clear, understandable and be easy to apply with people and enterprises but also minimize the conservative status, industry interests when issuing policies and laws.

3. Regarding listening to feedbacks, study and solve the recommendations of enterprises

Annually, the Ministry of Finance, especially the tax offices and customs offices (including the central and local ones) hold conferences on dialogue with enterprises and handle enterprises' proposals in time. In addition, the dissemination  and propaganda of financial legislation is also highly valued through regional legal aid conferences throughout the country which financial policies and legislation are popular to each enterprise in localities, and at the same time recognizing and resolving the recommendations of enterprises immediately at conferences.

In addition, in the course of drafting documents, apart from the implementation of the Law on the Promulgation of Legal Documents in the gathering comments stage, the Ministry of Finance frequently gets comments from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Vietnam, business associations, professional associations to timely recognize comments on the completion of draft documents.

4. Regarding improment of  the business investment environment (call for investment and serving post-investment enterprises)

In implementing the Resolution 19 and the Resolution 35 of the Government, the Ministry of Finance submitted to the Government and the National Assembly for amendments and supplements of many laws, decrees and promulgation of many circulars to remove difficulties for production. Implementing the requirements of simplification, reducing time to tax implementation and customs procedures, contributing to improviment of the business environment, ensuring transparency of institutions. Thereby, it has contributed to attract investment and create favorable environment for investment projects to promote effectively.

5.      Regarding the propaganda and education of officials who have the sense of serving enterprises, to take enterprises as a service target rather than trying to " punishing" businesses, or have to "controlling"businesses, especially for a number of cadres: tax, customs, treasury ...

This is the core issue for administrative reforms to come into life and to prevent and address the shortcomings, limitations and even negative effects of civil servants. Together with solutions on administrative reform, especially the institutional reform and modernization of management, the Ministry of Finance has strengthened the training and retraining of civil servants to meet the requirements of changing management methods from pre-inspection to post-inspection; To strengthen rules and disciplines of cadres and civil servants in performing public duties and carryout rotatations of cadres and civil servants; to simplify administrative procedures, to publicize administrative procedures to improve the compliance and efficiency of monitoring of people and enterprises; to promote the application of information technology in the reception and settlement of administrative procedures, thereby minimizing the communication between civil servants,  people and enterprises.

6. Regarding the proposal of making good forecasts, prediction and regular reporting to businesses.

To summarize and evaluate impacts, forecasting and predicting policies are also compulsory in the process of elaborating and promulgating normative legal documents stipulated in the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents. The Ministry of Finance strictly implement. In addition, the Ministry of Finance regularly organizes comments and dissemination of policies and propaganda of the law in the process of drafting legal documents in order to take advantage of comments of organizations and Individuals, especially the business community will also help businesses planning  their production and business plans in a timely manner when policies are issued and enforced.

7.  Regarding policies on creating favorable conditions for start-up and initial  enterprises

Over the past years, tax incentives, especially is for CIT, have been oriented towards incentives and encouraging for new investment projects, including start-up enterprises, especially incentives for high technology enterprises to develop technology and products that are in the period of trial production, products made from new technology applied in Vietnam. At the same time, the establishment and operation of Credit Guarantee Fund for SMEs has contributed effectively to start-up and initial  enterprises.

In the coming time, the Ministry of Finance will continue to study and develop other supporting policies, such as the mechanism of corporate bond issuance, to create more open conditions for facilitating start up businesses.

• The Ministry of Construction: - In recent years, the recommendations of enterprises that sent to the Ministry of Construction have been studied, answered promptly, satisfactorily, removing difficulties and obstacles for enterprises. Many obstacles and recommendations related to the inadequacies of the law have been seriously received, amended, supplemented and perfected by the Ministry of Construction for the system of legal documents in the construction sector, facilitating for people and businesses.
• In drafting legal documents, drafts of documents are always consulted in many forms (documents, seminars, conferences, comments from the business community, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Vietnam, posted on the website of the Ministry. Comments of people and enterprises have been studied and received in the completion of legal documents.
• - In the process of drafting language and technical documents for assuring compliance with the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents. Accordingly, the language of the documents must ensure accurate, universal, clear and easy to understand.
• The Ministry of Justice:

1.      In principle, when drafting legal documents, agencies chairing drafts that shall have to ensure the transparency, clarity and specificity of each document. According to the provisions of Article 8 of the Law on the Promulgation of Legal Documents, the language used in the legal documents must be clear and universal, the expressions must be clear and easy to understand; legal documents must specify the contents to be adjusted, not regulate in general, and not to re-stipulate the contents prescribed in other legal documents. At the same time, Article 69 of Decree No. 34/2016 / ND-CP dated 14 May 2016 of the Government detailing some articles and measures to implement the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents also specifies on techniques of using language in legal documents as follows:

 " The language used in documents is Vietnamese, accurate and universal.

2. Do not use local expressions, ancient words and colloquial expressions. Foreign words can only be used when there are no corresponding Vietnamese words for replacement. Foreign words can be used directly if they are commonly used, popular or transcribed into Vietnamese,

Documents must use written language, the expression must be clear, be simple and be easy to understand. In documents with the technical terms to clarify the content, the term must be explained.

4. Abbreviated words should only be used in case of necessity, and must be interpreted those words at the first occurrence of documents.

For documents that use many acronyms. It is necessary to provide separately an explanation of the whole acronym in documents.

5. Words used in documents must accurately reflect contents that need to be conveyed without making rise of many understanding ways; In case of using words that can be understood by many meanings, they must be explained in the sense used in documents.

Do not use question words and rhetorical measures in documents.

6. Words must be used consistently in documents ".

Therefore, in order to ensure the clarity, detail, readability, comprehensibility and ease of implementation in the provisions of law, the drafting process of legal documents in general, The Ministers, the Heads of ministerial-level agencies and the drafting agencies should strictly abide by the Law on the Promulgation of Legal Documents in 2015 and Decree No. 34, especially the Article 75 of the Decree No 34 on the side of the Ministry of Justice will urgently develop and improve professional guidelines on the development of legal normative documents in general and techniques for drafting legal normative documents. Law in particular for the ministries, branches and localities to apply uniformly. Ministries, sectors and localities should continue to pay attention to the intensive training and fostering activities in order to improve the capacity of drafters of legal documents.

2.2. On the development of mechanisms and policies, the Law on promulgation of legal documents in 2015 and the Decree No. 34/2016 / ND-CP dated May 14, 2016, a number of articles and measures for the implementation of the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents regulates a number of new mechanisms to overcome and limit this situation in the course of formulating and promulgating legal documents. In particular, there are some points worth noting:

•  To separate the process of proposing the development of legal documents with the drafting process for law projects, ordinances, some types of decrees of the Government and resolutions of the provincial People's Councils. Accordingly, policies must be reviewed, approved before drafting. In order to develop policies, ministries, sectors and localities need to review and evaluate the impact of policies, collect comments ...; Policies must be evaluated prior to review. Each stage in the process of making a proposal for the development of legal documents, including formulation, impacts assessments, consultations, policies review, policies review and approval which are all institutional mechanisms to contribute to limiting the status of "sectoral interests" in the policies formulation.
•  During the drafting process, Laws and Decree No. 34 stipulate the mechanism for the establishment of the Drafting Board and Editorial Team; to provide the gathering of comments of agencies, organizations and individuals; to receive and explain opinions; to verify, to consider and communicate to attract the participation of agencies, organizations and individuals, to formulate mechanisms for countering projects.

+ For circulars which directly affect the rights, obligations and interests of people and enterprises or are related to many branches and fields, the ministers and the heads of the ministerial-level agencies shall set up the Appraisal Consultation Council with participation of relevant agencies, organizations, units, experts and scientists to appraise drafts of circulars.

Therefore, in order to prevent the "conservative" or "sectoral" status of the process of formulating mechanisms and policies for the process of formulating legal document development proposals, drafting legal documents. It is necessary to comply with the provisions of the Law on the Promulgation of Legal Documents in 2015 and the Decree No. 34.