Illustrative photo. A citizen applies for public administrative services at the centre for public administration in the central province of Ha Tinh. (Source: VNA)
Hanoi (VNA) – Even before Vietnam became affectedby COVID-19, poverty, economic growth and the environment were top concerns ofcitizens in the country, reveals the 2019 Provincial Governance and PublicAdministration Performance Index (PAPI) Report released by the UNDP on April28.
The report also highlights that the country made encouragingprogress in governance and public administration performance to addresscitizens’ needs in the past year and delivers key insights into a broadspectrum of reform areas across nearly a decade. This stock taking will helpinform decision-makers in 2020 – a pivotal year that will shape Vietnam’sfuture development agenda.
A total of 14,138 people randomly selected from all 63cities and provinces nationwide were interviewed for the report. Since 2009,the voices of 131,501 citizens have been reflected in annual PAPI reports,providing a rich reservoir of findings for decision-makers at a crucial timewhen they are defining the Socio-Economic Development Strategy for the comingdecade and are now addressing the recent global health and economic twin crisescaused by the pandemic.
“The 2019 report highlights PAPI’s value in assessinggovernance and public administration reforms across a decade and benchmarkinggovernance performance towards national development targets and the SustainableDevelopment Goals with improvements across most dimensions,” said CaitlinWiesen, UNDP Resident Representative in Vietnam.
“Importantly, nationallyrepresentative findings on top citizen greatest concerns, including poverty andjob loss, and evaluation of recent reform priorities regarding control ofcorruption and e-governance, provide valuable insights for policy makers asVietnam enters the recovery phase of COVID-19”.
“The analysis and assessment of public administration andgovernance performance at the provincial level from citizen perspectives is avery important channel of information which not only reflects the citizenperception and expectations at the grassroot level but also serves as anindication of provincial public administration and governance performancehelping the policy makers introduce timely policy adjustment and improvementsto respond to actual circumstance,” said Vice President of the VietnamFatherland Front Central Committee Nguyen Huu Dung.
Poverty has topped the list of most important issues facingVietnam in the past five years and 2019 was no exception as nearly one-quarterof respondents stated that it was their main concern.
Jobs and employment have also remained in the top four ofgreatest concerns since 2015, despite the country’s rapid growth and jobcreation.
These concerns are likely to be amplified in the comingmonths with large groups of citizens having been hit hard by the currentCOVID-19 crisis.
The state of the environment has remained a significantpublic concern, the third most serious in 2019. In the majority of provinces,citizens have reported that air quality has remained the same or degraded.
This year’s PAPI report contains a special chapter on genderand leadership. The 2019 report found that voters exhibited a strong biasagainst women in leadership roles, especially at village level – which isconsidered to be one of the most important levels of governance by citizens.
The report also shows a largely positive trend over the pastfive years with improvements in five out of the six initial dimensions ofgovernment performance measured by PAPI. This steady growth in averageprovincial scores from 34 points in 2015 to 37.4 points in 2019 underlinesimprovements in provincial governance during the current government term(2016-2021).
Last year, the greatest progress was made in the dimensionon enhancing Control of Corruption in the Public Sector, which is most stronglycorrelated with overall citizen satisfaction, and increasing Transparency inLocal Decision-making.
The report reflects the clear impact of this anti-corruptioncampaign on perceptions of grand and petty corruption. This dimension saw thestrongest improvements in 2019 at commune and national levels – with 5 percentmore respondents than in 2018 reporting that corruption was decreasing./.
