Vietnam to Improve Investment and Business Environment through Legislative Technical Innovation

Dr. Phan Duc Hieu from the National Assembly's Economic and Financial Committee has pointed out that legislative technical innovation and strengthening mechanisms to detect and prevent hidden business conditions early are essential for improving the investment and business environment and achieving sustainable economic growth in Vietnam. While acknowledging the significant achievements in institutional reform over the past 20 years, Dr. Hieu stated that the process of reducing business conditions can still get "stuck" in a complex web of regulations. He attributed the causes to challenges in translating policy design into actual actions and difficulties in the enforcement phase of law implementation. "Institutional reform is a continuous process that closely follows socio-economic developments, not something that is completed once and for all," Dr. Hieu emphasized. He highlighted the difficulty in defining "promotion" when translating policy directions into specific laws and the risk of inadvertently creating new licenses or business conditions. Furthermore, regarding law enforcement, he noted that the current situation, where the implementation of the same law varies across different regions and departments, indicates that bottlenecks exist not only in the legal text but also in the execution stage. To fundamentally resolve these challenges, Dr. Hieu proposed legislative technical innovation, specifically the consolidation of normative legal documents. Currently, each law typically regulates matters within the purview of a single ministry. This leads to redundancy and unnecessary procedures when a real-world project involves multiple ministries. Therefore, he recommended consolidating some laws in the future to achieve higher systemic coherence. He also suggested that instead of individual decrees for each law, the government should issue a unified decree guiding multiple laws for common issues, such as investment projects. Additionally, he called for strengthening mechanisms to address difficulties and obstacles in law enforcement. He proposed the establishment of a "Special Task Force" comprising experts from local or central levels, as businesses are often unclear where to turn when problems arise, and the existing listening and resolution mechanisms are inefficient. This task force should not only record issues but also have the authority to directly listen to and resolve procedural obstacles for businesses and citizens. Regarding parliamentary oversight, he indicated that a qualitative change is expected from 2026 to 2030. In addition to verifying compliance with implementing regulations of laws, future oversight will strengthen the monitoring of content, examining whether implementing regulations truly align with the reform spirit of the law and whether they introduce new procedures. Dr. Hieu also addressed feedback channels to the National Assembly, emphasizing the importance of a system that systematically researches and aggregates proposals from the business community, going beyond traditional channels for handling complaints and denunciations, to enable the National Assembly to convey opinions to the government and relevant ministries.