Vietnam aims to leap by 5-7 places in business environment improvement rankings in 2019

The Government plans to drastically boost the improvement of the business environment, targeting to put Vietnam's business environment and competitiveness into the ASEAN top 4.

PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc speaks at the conference. (Photo: NDO/Tran Hai)

The target was announced at a national teleconference between the Government and 63 provinces and cities nationwide in Hanoi on December 28, under the draft Resolution on continuing to carry out the main solutions to improve the business environment and national competitiveness in 2019, towards 2021, as presented at the conference.

In particular, it set raising Vietnam’s place in the Ease of Doing Business Rankings by the World Bank (WB) to 15-20 levels, particularly, from 5-7 steps in 2019.

Meanwhile, it also sets to increase Vietnam’s position in global competitiveness rankings by 3-5 steps next year and from 5-10 grades by 2021, in addition to leaping rankings in the WB's logistics performance index by 5-10 steps and in e-Government rankings by the United Nations by 1-15 grades in 2019 and 10-15 steps by 2020.

Currently, despite achieving higher results than before in improving the business environment, rankings in the business environment improvement and competitiveness are still only at a moderate level on the international level (69/190 countries on business environment). In the ASEAN region, Vietnam is outside the top 4 due to ranking 5th in the business environment and 7th in competitiveness.

In addition to the indicators witnessing rapid improvement (access to electricity, tax and insurance, and business startups), there are several indicators that lag behind regional and global levels (index on settlement of bankruptcy in 2018 down 8 grades compared to the previous year, at the bottom of the rankings; while cross-border trade transactions ranking was down 7 levels).

Regarding budget collection, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said that, two days ago, he discussed the issue of budget collection with Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung and affirmed that it can be assured of the state budget collection.

As of December 15, the total state budget balance reached VND1.272 trillion, equal to 96.5% of the estimate, in which, domestic revenue reached 92.1% of the estimate and collection from crude oil exceeded 65.5%.

The country saw a trade surplus of over US$7 billion in 2018 (compared to only US$2.1 billion in 2017), which is more than three times the previous year's record. The head of the Government said that this result was achieved in the context of the US-China trade conflict, so it became even more meaningful.

PM Phuc said that the economic growth model and growth quality had positive changes. The GDP growth rate is double that of inflation. Especially, economic growth reached 7.08%, while credit growth was low (about 14% compared to 2017) and crude oil production decreased. The number of newly established enterprises this year is also higher than that of the previous years (131,275 newly established businesses with a total registered capital of VND1.478 trillion)./.

( VNF/VNA )