Representatives of foreign business associations said the Vietnamese government should speed up the reform of its administrative procedures to facilitate their operations in Vietnam .

At a discussion between the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and foreign business associations in Vietnam on administrative procedure reform in Hanoi on October 8, President of the European Chamber of Commerce (EuroCham) Alain Cany said such reform is a vital, but challenging task for the country.

Vietnam is at great risk of losing its competitive edge due to its bureaucracy, he said, adding that up to 20-30 percent of Vietnam ’s competitive advantages are misspent due to its ineffective administrative management system.

Cany therefore recommended that seminars and talks on this issue should be organised more often and pledged to contribute ideas to making these dialogues useful.

Sharing Cany’s views, Nicolas Bonnardel, a representative from the French Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam , suggested that Vietnam should act swiftly to improve its competitiveness, given the current rapid pace of change in the global economic landscape.

According to President of the Japanese Business Association in Vietnam Kazuhiro Ohira, the most important thing for Vietnam now is to create a more complete and stable legal system.

A representative from the 1,300-member Republic of Korea Business Association in Vietnam affirmed that many RoK investors want to expand their operations in Vietnam despite the impact of the global economic crisis. He also said that the country should weed out unnecessary procedures to ensure the transparency of information for foreign individuals and businesses.

Applauding the foreign business community’s ideas, VCCI President Vu Tien Loc affirmed that the Vietnamese government always provides equal treatment to both local and foreign businesses and is ready to create favourable conditions for their operations.

He said cutting down administrative procedures, increasing competitiveness and ensuring the quality of growth are considered important measures by the government. He said he hoped that the foreign business community will continue contributing ideas to improve administrative procedures and the business environment in Vietnam .

The Government has actively implemented a project on the simplification of administrative procedures between 2007-2010. As a result, the country currently has only 63 sets of district- and communal-level administrative procedures, which have replaced and simplified the previous system, which had 10,000 sets at the communal level and 700 sets at district level./.