Thua Thien Hue province has launched firm actions to strongly and effectively improve the investment and business environment and enhance competitiveness. This resolve is clearly illustrated by applicable guidelines and solutions, especially the Program for Thua Thien Hue Business Environment and Competitiveness Improvement in 2022 - 2025 (Plan 19/KH-UBND dated January 20, 2022 of the Provincial People's Committee). Vietnam Business Forum has an interview with Mr. Nguyen Van Phuong, Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee, on this issue. Ngo Khuyen reports.
Thua Thien Hue province has achieved impressive economic growth and investment attraction results in the first nine months of 2022. Could you please introduce these results? What are the key tasks for the last months of the year?
Based on our achievements in 2021, Thua Thien Hue province witnessed a positive and comprehensive socioeconomic recovery in 2022. In the first nine months, the province obtained an estimated GRDP growth of 8.04%; total retail revenue of consumer goods and services of VND38,541.4 billion, up 17.9% year on year; export turnover of US$919 million, up 7.7%; total social investment value of VND20,495 billion, up 8.2%; and budget revenue of VND9,103.3 billion, up 17.6%.
The province licensed 24 new projects with a total investment funds of VND12,189.4 billion (including four FDI projects with US$257.17 million, equivalent to VND5,286.71 billion); allowed 16 projects to change their investment value, with five adding an extra VND521.5 billion. In addition, seven approved projects are seeking investors, expected to draw over VND3,523 billion. The province had 633 new companies with VND5,498.8 billion of registered investment capital in the reported period, up 38.8% in projects and 59.6% in value.
Investment promotion has been accelerated. Since the beginning of the year, the province has worked with many large corporations; signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) in Vietnam, the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (AmCham) and the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (EuroCham); and participated in investment and trade promotion in some countries.
In the coming time, the province will continue to carry out consistent tasks and solutions: Building socioeconomic development plans and public investment plans and effectively launching the “Socioeconomic restoration and development program” in 2022 - 2025; and promoting and calling on large, well-known corporations to invest in developing new capacity-creating industries. The province will step up tourism promotion, marketing and stimulus at home and abroad; organize Autumn Festival within the framework of Hue Festival 2022. Thua Thien Hue will focus on directing drastic tasks and solutions to complete state budget collection and on workable solutions to accelerate public investment; guide four working groups to supervise and manage investment projects to urge, inspect, supervise and handle existing problems to advance privately invested projects as well as disbursement of public investment capital for State-funded projects.
With its aspirations for rising up and desires for development, Thua Thien Hue is determined to achieve its goals in 2022 and create momentum for breakthrough growth in the whole period.
What are outstanding development opportunities from the National Assembly's Resolution 38/2021/QH15 dated November 13, 2021 on piloting Thua Thien Hue’s development policies? How has the province specifically materialized them?
The National Assembly's Resolution 38/2021/QH15 dated November 13, 2021 on piloting Thua Thien Hue- specific development policies has helped Thua Thien Hue province promote its internal resources, mobilize maximize resources for development investment and socioeconomic infrastructure investment, ensure a harmonious balance of economic growth and cultural development; guarantee sustainable budget revenue; and improve people's incomes.
These policies are particularly important and significant to support, encourage, motivate and promote Thua Thien Hue province to unlock its potential strengths to soon become a centrally governed city. Therefore, to bring the resolution into life soon, the Thua Thien Hue Provincial Party Committee issued Program 12-CTr/TU dated May 13, 2022 on implementation of Resolution 38/2021/QH15 dated November 13, 2021 of the National Assembly on piloting Thua Thien Hue-specific development policies; the Provincial People's Committee launched Plan 231/KH-UBND dated June 30, 2022 on implementation of Program 12-Ctr/TU dated May 13, 2022 of the Provincial Party Committee (16th term) to execute Resolution 38/2021/QH15 dated November 13, 2021 of the National Assembly on piloting Thua Thien Hue-specific development policies, which materialized Program tasks and solutions of the Provincial Party Committee on implementation of Resolution 38/2021/QH15 with detailed work contents. At the same time, the province clearly defined tasks of all levels and branches of authority; upheld the responsibility of agency leaders for implementation.
In 2021, the province’s PCI ranked 8th out of 63 provinces and cities (only behind its second-placed rankings in 2013) but its overall score was the highest ever (69.24 points). What will the province do to continue to improve its scores and rankings in the coming time?
The Provincial People's Committee launched Plan 237/KH-UBND dated July 6, 2022 on upgrading the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) in 2022 to assess and analyze its rankings to figure out material solutions to raise its PCI rankings in the following years and strive to be in the Top 5 in the country.
By analyzing contents that were not appreciated by the business community, the province found that the role of business associations in formulating policies and regulations has not been promoted; enterprises are not ready to use the court to settle disputes and spend a lot of time to handling economic cases; companies find it hard to access land for manufacturing and business expansion or speed up site clearance. These are challenging the province to upgrade the business investment environment in the coming time.
Therefore, in addition to workable solutions, the province will be determined to direct implementation of the following guidelines and tasks:
The province will drastically direct administrative reform with many consistent solutions to make positive changes in all fields; build e-government with smart city development initiatives and align local administration to become relevant and adaptive to Fourth Industrial Revolution; accelerate delivery of online public services of Level 4 and adopt the single-window mechanism in the electronic environment; use online public service application on a mobile platform integrated with Hue-S application; and continue to conduct further assessment of the District and Department Competitiveness Index (DDCI).
Thua Thien Hue province will continue researching and promulgating policies to enhance support for businesses to access necessary resources, to remove barriers, and to enhance corporate competitiveness in the province.
The province will regularly direct, urge, inspect, supervise and handle existing problems in order to advance privately funded projects and disburse public investment funds for State-funded projects. Doing so, it will help quicken investment preparations and early hand over business sites to investors to launch their projects.
Thua Thien Hue province will facilitate business dialogues and contacts, both face-to-face and online forms, in order to promptly remove and solve difficulties for enterprises; apply risk management solutions to monitor and supervise local businesses' activities in order to build a favorable business investment environment based on regulatory compliance.
The province will strengthen discipline, build a strong administrative workforce to meet work quality requirements, and fundamentally change the service attitude of public employees who will support and accompany enterprises.
Plan 19/KH-UBND dated January 20, 2022 shows that Thua Thien Hue continues to strongly improve the business environment and enhance competitiveness. To spread resolve of provincial leaders to the administration system and enterprises, what tasks and solutions is Thua Thien Hue focusing on?
To translate the determination of provincial leaders into the administration system and the business community, the province is focusing on the following solutions:
First, promptly and effectively implementing existing central and provincial policies to deal with difficulties faced by the business community due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Second, urgently developing new policies to remove difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic such as interest rate support policy, tourism stimulus policy, and business space support policy.
Third, further reforming administrative procedures to release investment resources, especially carrying out tasks assigned to specialized workgroups led by the Chairperson and Vice Chairpersons of the Provincial People's Committee; monitoring and handling problems, speeding up project implementation, investor support and investment procedures; maximizing the use of information technology for work exchange; reducing waiting time for settlement of documents and procedures among governmental agencies.
Fourth, connecting corporate customers with credit institutions to access cheap and low-risk capital; providing transparent and effective information about corporate customers with credit institutions and vice versa in a bid to recommend loans from commercial banks to businesses with good projects in the locality.
Fifth, preparing conditions to catch the new wave of investment after the COVID-19 pandemic: Available facilities, highly qualified human resources, ready infrastructure for electricity, water, information, transportation, and warehousing to meet investors’ needs and reform administrative procedures, reduce the time to prepare and launch investment; focusing on supporting and motivating local businesses to grow and participate in chain linkages with large domestic and foreign corporations.
Thank you very much!
Source: Vietnam Business Forum
Vietnamese
October 2024
Hanoi