Vinh Long province determines that improving the business investment environment and enhancing competitiveness is a cross-cutting task. To realize this task, the province has constantly reviewed bottlenecks for settlement and improvement. Especially as the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a negative impact on business operations, the provincial government has closely monitored and carried out many solutions to deal with difficulties. Mr. Lu Quang Ngoi, Chairman of Vinh Long Provincial People's Committee, granted an interview to our reporters on this issue. Ngo Khuyen reports.
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What tasks and solutions is Vinh Long province focusing to achieve its goals in 2022 and beyond, thus continuing to realize the aspiration of a dynamically developing Vinh Long, a place of prosperity, as dubbed for 190 years now?
In 2022, the province’s socioeconomic activities will be flexibly adapted to the COVID-19 epidemic in the context of existing difficulties. Faced with this reality, from the last months of 2021, the Provincial People's Committee established a steering committee for economic recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic and launched a plan for POST-COVID-19 socioeconomic recovery and development. In 2022, the steering committee set up working groups in charge of economic recovery and development tasks and at the same time launched Plan 13/KH-UBND to carry out Resolution 11/NQ-CP on the Socioeconomic Development and Recovery Program.
Currently, Vinh Long province is focusing its efforts on consistently implementing second-phase solutions, a key stage of economic recovery roadmap. So far, many important achievements have provided momentum for socioeconomic development in the coming time:
(1) Enhancing the capacity of healthcare, disease prevention and control: The province promptly announced local epidemic levels to people, organizations and businesses for their prompt and active responses to organize production and business associated with safety assurance; and adopt flexible and effective epidemic prevention measures. The coverage of COVID-19 vaccinations is high and the province keeps accelerating the rollout of booster vaccination for people.
(2) Business recovery support: The province launched policies on tax and fee exemption and reduction and tax payment rescheduling; on repayment term rescheduling, interest rate exemption and reduction and debt restructuring for customers affected by the COVID-19 epidemic. Vinh Long also supported businesses in recruiting and training workers to meet their business recovery and expansion needs. The Provincial People's Committee also regularly organized meetings and dialogues to seek prompt solutions to business difficulties and problems.
(3) Development investment: The province determined that promoting public investment disbursement is a key political task. Public investment is a leading and pervasive factor that positively helps economic recovery and development. Right from the beginning of the year, the Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee issued Directive 07/CT-UBND on speeding up public investment and disbursement plan in 2022, clearly defined the action roadmap and assigning specific tasks to each provincial agency and district-level government to solve difficulties and obstacles emerging in investment project implementation and disbursement, particularly key infrastructure construction investment projects to open up resources for production, business and investment development. Vinh Long continues to speed up investment promotion, building industrial zones, completing infrastructure construction and training human resources to facilitate production and business and complete the provincial and district plans for land use as the foundation for socioeconomic development in the coming time.
To unleash the potential and resources of sustainable development of Vinh Long, the province is focusing on carrying out three strategic breakthroughs in human resources, infrastructure and investment attraction. How do you see these bottlenecks and efforts to remove them in the near future?
To unlock potential and resources for sustainable development of Vinh Long province, the province is actively removing bottlenecks in infrastructure, human resources and policies as follows:
First, prioritizing investment resources for socioeconomic infrastructure, with focus placed on urban and traffic infrastructure development for production and tourism development. By 2025, the province will build and upgrade 465km of bridges and roads; actively irrigate 95% of agricultural land; enable 95% of rural households with access to clean water; and 99.5% of households with access to electricity.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh visited workers at Hoa Phu Industrial Zone during his working visit to Vinh Long province in January 2022
Second, developing human resources for new growth models, meeting international integration requirements, concentrating on training managerial and skilled workers. By 2025, the rate of trained workers will reach 65%. It will train with high-level corporate governance knowledge 300 business leaders, 700 mid-level managers, and 20 science and technology postgraduates, combined with training support for 10 doctors and 10 masters.
The third is mechanisms and policies. First of all, it is necessary to concretize, promptly and effectively implement central mechanisms and policies on taxes and credits issued to support and remove difficulties in investment, production and business; speed up regulatory document review to abolish and replace inappropriate, overlapped, incomplete and obstructive legal documents; timely promulgate mechanisms and policies to support and attract enterprises to invest in the province; and mobilize investment funds of VND83 trillion for the province in 2021-2025, equal to 23% of GRDP.
In addition to clearing the above bottlenecks, the province will continue to focus on the following key tasks:
On planning: The Vinh Long master plan in 2021-2030, with a vision to 2050, is being focused on directing and elaborating an integrated method, expected to be completed and submitted to the Prime Minister for approval by the end of 2022. District-level land use planning and construction planning are also actively implemented in line with the provincial planning to facilitate socioeconomic development.
On digital transformation: The province has focused on developing information technology infrastructure, e-government and digital government. The provincial public service portal has connected 1,061 online public services with the National Public Service Portal, deployed connection infrastructure, and monitored the data transmission network at four administrative levels. It has encouraged information technology firms to expand digital investment; supported and promoted digital transformation; and enabled 15% of small and medium-sized enterprises to apply e-commerce forms by 2025.
Could you tell us how the province is concerned about improving the investment and business environment and enhancing competitiveness? What limitations need to be addressed in the future?
In the past time, the province has actively carried out many consistent solutions to improve the investment environment, apply investment support and promotion policies, and upgrade planning quality to create a favorable stable legal environment. Every year, after the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) is announced, Vinh Long province opens a conference to analyze and evaluate its results, strengths and weaknesses to provide solutions to improve scores and rankings. At the same time, the Provincial People's Committee released a direction to departments, agencies, branches and localities to review, develop plans and carry out targets within their jurisdiction.
In the PCI results announced by VCCI, Vinh Long always ranked good and very good in 2016-2020 (ranked 6th in 2016 and 2017, 8th in 2018, 3rd in 2019, and 6th 2020). In 2021. The ranking slid to No. 23 out of 63 provinces and cities, scoring 65.43 points and standing among good performers. The survey results show that enterprises did not have good views on economic management quality in some areas, reflected with low scores.
Therefore, the province needs to make more efforts to create a favorable business environment for enterprises and attract many investors; must be more drastic in overcoming limitations like reforming administrative procedures, enhancing the friendly attitude of public employees; and must improve access to land, labor quality, business registration or access to planning documents and legal documents.
Determining that improving the business investment environment and enhancing competitiveness is a regular task, authorities at all levels are taking strong and consistent actions and believe that there will be positive and effective progress in the coming time.
Thank you very much!
Source: Vietnam Business Forum
Vietnamese
October 2024
Hanoi