A start-up business shows its products at the Da Nang Start-up and Innovation festival in the central city (Photo: VNA) Da Nang (VNA) - Building the correct legal framework is one of themajor challenges holding back start-up businesses and now the Governmentis looking at easing red-tape and giving an easier ride to both young companiesand the private sector.
That was the message from Dr. TranDu Lich, a member of the Prime Minister’s advisory team,speaking at the Da Nang Start-upInnovation Festival on November 1.
He said state-owned companies had a head start overnew start-ups because they already had good legal framework in place. Thisis blocking start-up development in Vietnam, Lich said, adding legalframework was often first priority for businesses, but start-up raised frominnovation and initiative idea don’t do this.
Nguyen Hoa Binh,chairman of Next Tech Group, an investor on the TV show Shark Tank Vietnam,said Vietnam needed to establish a ‘sandbox’ policy to support start-upbusiness – a model that had not been existed in the past decades.
It cannot create innovation if we apply traditionallegal framework or business model for start-up business, Binhsaid.
Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade TranThanh Tung, who is a mastermind of the national businessstart-up project in Vietnam, said a new policy would be needed to create thebest conditions for both domestic and foreign business start-up projects. Buthe did warn the policy could ensure profit transferring for foreign businesseswhich may be seen as money laundering.
Ambassador of Israel to Vietnam Nadav Eshcar addedthat a start-up ecosystem and innovation authority were built to support newideas and initiatives.
Deputy head of mission of Ireland to Vietnam ElisaCavacece said it committed to continue co-operation with Da NangCity in start-up support. She said the city andthe Ireland Embassy in Vietnam had agreed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)on high quality human resource education, management skills for the city’spersonnel and start-up programme for students in the city.
Dr. Catherine Phuong from the UNDP,said the private sector was an important factor for sustainable developmentunder the UNDP’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in 2030, adding start-up business idea promotion was still a challenge and a youth collaborationwas established in Vietnam two years ago to support young start-up businesses.
Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Le Trung Chinh said Da Nanghad been planned as a national centre of business start-up and a rendezvous ofglobal enterprises.
The city also debuted its first Da Nangstart-up venture Fund with the joint fund-raising from business groups at thefestival. The fund will provide fund for innovation and businessinitiatives in the city and central Vietnam.
Da Nang has 18,000businesses, 95 percent of which are small- and medium-sized enterprises. The city plans to support 200 projects and 80 start-upbusinesses, in which at least 20 percent of businesses will successfully callfund from investors, in 2020./.
