Flaws in key business laws will not be removed anytime soon as no draft revisions to these laws will be presented to the National Assembly at its next session which opens this Thursday.
The National Assembly (NA) Standing Committee on October 18 gave a thumbs down to a government-prepared draft law that amends and supplements some articles in the investment, enterprise and construction laws, making it impossible to introduce the draft law to lawmakers at the upcoming NA session in Hanoi.
It took the government less than a month to complete the drafting of this law intended to improving the investment and business climate by doing away with some business conditions.
The draft law has been made compact by amending only 18 articles in the Investment Law, the Enterprise Law and the Construction Law, instead of 89 articles in 12 laws as earlier planned. Especially, the Investment Law has six articles to be revised, including one on the list of conditional business operations, the Enterprise Law has five and the Construction Law has seven.
A number of amendments clearly demonstrate an attempt of the government to improve the business climate such as Clause 1, Article 102 of the Construction Law, with the time of issuing a construction permit proposed for shortening from 30 to 20 days.
The draft law cuts the number of conditional business fields to 218, down by 49 from the current number provided in the Investment Law, said minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung at the meeting on October 18.
When asked to explain the draft law, Dung said: “The draft amendments may not produce significant results. But it would be fine if they were approved as they would remove the existing problems faced by the corporate sector.”
Though acknowledging the government’s effort to help enterprises out of the tough economic conditions, NA Chair Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan said: “Having read the draft, I am disappointed.
“The draft makes no mention of the contents that actually need to be revised. Having gone through all the articles of the draft, I found they could hardly create any new impetus for investment and business activity. I am not convinced to let it go before the NA if it is in its current form.”
Chair of the NA People’s Aspirations Committee Nguyen Thi Thanh Hai said, “The reasons to revise some articles in the existing laws provided in the report are not at all new. There are signs of the involvement of some interest groups (in the revision process).
“I agree that it is necessary to pull businesses out of the woods but the law making procedure must be respected and the urgency of law revisions must be justified.”
The NA Economic Committee proposed the government conduct a review and only include the issues that are hindering the operations of businesses in the draft. Those amendments and supplementations aimed to address the problems arising from law enforcement should be eliminated to make the draft more feasible.
Minister Dung even admitted: “If the laws in question are amended, it would be good for enterprises, but if they aren’t, business would be as usual.”
As the amendments to the three laws are expected to go into force on January 1, 2017, the NA Economic Committee told the government to urgently do a decree with detailed guidelines.
“Without careful deliberation, those amendments might cause fresh troubles for business,” NA vice Chair Phung Quoc Hien said when recapitulating the NA Standing Committee meeting on October 18.
Source: http://english.thesaigontimes.vn
Key words: No draft amendments, business laws, before NA
