Prime Minister: By April 20, there must be a plan to cut administrative procedures and business conditions

Prime Minister Le Minh Hung has ordered ministries to produce, by 20 April, concrete plans to cut administrative procedures and improve business conditions, with the aim of significantly reducing costs and processing time for businesses and citizens.

Immediate reform push under Conclusion 18

At a meeting of the Government’s Standing Committee on the afternoon of 13 April, the Prime Minister discussed implementation of procedural reform under Conclusion 18. The meeting emphasized that reforms should not be delayed until the end of Q2 as originally planned, but carried out immediately to deliver early results.

Scope of current conditional sectors and business conditions

According to the report presented at the meeting, there are still 198 conditional business sectors and 4,603 business conditions. The central government has requested cutting about 30% of these sectors and eliminating all unnecessary conditions.

The stated objectives are to cut processing time in half and reduce compliance costs.

Requirements for ministries and government review timeline

The Prime Minister directed that ministries must be directly involved and not delegate the work. No later than 20 April, each ministry is required to submit specific plans covering:

• reductions in administrative procedures and business conditions; and
• decentralization of decision-making.

After submissions, the Ministry of Justice and the Government Office will consolidate, review, and submit the proposals to the Government for approval within April.

Focus on reducing real time and costs

The Prime Minister stressed that the reform should not be measured only by the number of conditions removed. More important is reducing actual time and costs for businesses. Even if the number of eliminated conditions is small, the impact can be greater if bottlenecks are addressed correctly.

Decentralization, technology use, and “information once” principle

Ministries and agencies were asked to review all procedures within their authority, simplify processes, and further decentralize. As planned, ministries will retain at most 30% of procedures, while the remainder will be shifted to localities and frontline agencies for resolution.

The Government also called for accelerating the use of technology and data. The principle is that individuals and businesses only provide information once; where data already exists, agencies should locate it themselves rather than requiring resubmission.

Monitoring and capacity building at local level

The Prime Minister directed agencies including the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Interior Ministry to actively propose reductions in their respective areas and to monitor implementation to avoid unnecessary procedures.

Another emphasis is improving the capacity of local officials. As decentralization increases and processing moves to localities, training and strengthening the workforce with adequate skills are needed to handle practical tasks.