Vietnam to amend 8 major economy-related laws

• Jan 05, 2022

Former Chairman of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) Nguyen Dinh Cung talked with Saigon Giai Phong regarding this important project.

Discussing the National Assembly’s consideration of this project, Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cung said that such a law to amend many other laws at the same time is a temporary solution to urgently address unexpected difficulties that businesses are facing, to more effectively mobilize and use resources, and to ultimately boost economic growth via more jobs for citizens.

This amendment to improve the investment environment is vital for the allocation of resources in the program for socio-economic recovery and development to be applied soon. That is also the focus of the institutional reform proposed in the 13th Party Congress, which is to develop production factor markets.

Commenting on the content of this project, Dr. Cung mentioned the positive points such as the reduction, and should be deeper in his opinion, of excise tax on electric vehicles to promote mass production. That is an action to implement international commitments on protecting the environment and encourage clean-industry-oriented manufacturing, consummation.

As to the automobile industry, he suggested larger and longer-term preferential policies to increase the competitiveness of the domestic industry against its international counterpart while also raise revenues for the state budget in the upcoming time.

Talking about the changes for the Electricity Law, Dr. Cung expressed his agreement with the approval for private enterprises to involve in building the transmission grid in order to remove the bottleneck between the current grid and the power source capacity.

However, certain content such as identify the demarcation between the State and private businesses in managing and operating this national transmission grid, the rights and responsibilities of the private sector, or the observance of safety requirements for this grid should be better clarified to reduce any possible risks. Also, the electricity price policy is a sensitive and complicated matter to consider carefully.

Dr. Cung then stressed that encouraging, incentive policies to attract investments should be seen as the nature of the Investment Law, not merely a few changes in some investment principles or procedures. There should not be a ‘List of Conditional Businesses and Investment’ for only conditional businesses since the word ‘investment’ itself includes a huge scope of matters and requires more greenlights from related state units.

That procedure might increase unnecessary time from the first stage of investment criteria evaluation, which should have been only the consideration of conditions when a business goes into operation. This, in turn, harmfully affects the chance that business enters the market and increase its overhead cost. It is also worth mentioning that business conditions have already been regulated, while investment ones are not yet identified.

The former Chairman mentioned the necessity to amend the Land Law as well, since serious bottlenecks have been existing for too long.

The 8 amended laws include the Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Public Investment Law, the Law on Investment under the public-private partnership mode, the Investment Law, the Bidding Law, the Electricity Law, the Enterprise Law, the Excise Tax Law, and the Civil Judgment Law.

Source: Sai Gon Giai Phong