HCMC to shorten time needed to handle enterprises’ requests

This is part of the city’s efforts to improve its investment environment this year, Phong said at a conference held on March 19 in the city to review the performance of the HCMC government’s investment working group and to collect the feedback of enterprises to improve the city’s investment environment.

The city at the event put forward 10 groups of solutions, such as facilitating administrative reform, enhancing the coordination among State agencies citywide, accessing land resources and stepping up digital and technology transformation.

Specifically, over 60% of public administrative procedures under the authority of the city are eligible to go online.

To cushion the tardiness in conducting administrative procedures, if the relevant departments and agencies fail to respond to enterprises’ requests in more than 15 working days, it will be assumed that they agreed with the requests and must take responsibility for the associated issues.

Phong stressed that there are a number of projects and issues that are beyond the authority of the city, so the city has to seek approval from the higher authorities, prolonging the time needed to handle enterprises’ investment procedures or requests. Therefore, Phong hoped that enterprises would share this obstacle with the city.

The city’s government expected that more projects will have their obstacles eliminated through the operations of the investment working group in the upcoming period. This will contribute to building an investment-friendly environment and make enterprises’ investment more effective, the chairman continued.

Earlier at the conference, many enterprises voiced their complaints about prolonged administrative procedures for making investments in HCMC.

Do Phuoc Tong, chairman of the HCMC Association of Mechanical-Electrical Enterprises, said that some members of the association were licensed to invest in the Saigon Hi-Tech Park in 2017 and 2018. However, they have not been able to start work on their projects as construction licenses were granted too late.

Similarly, Tran Viet Anh, vice chairman of the HCMC Union Business Associations, said it took a long time to complete essential procedures to invest in the city’s industrial parks. He cited an example of an enterprise seeking to invest in the Hiep Phuoc Industrial Park as saying that the firm took two to three years to finish all of the procedures. Meanwhile, at the same time, another enterprise investing in the neighboring provinces had already started the construction of its plant.

To entice investors to HCMC, Anh suggested the city build a database on enterprises that have invested in the city for the past 5-10 years to offer them investment incentives. Also, the city needs to develop specialized industrial zones deploying novel technology and employing highly-skilled employees to attract major corporations.

Not only local enterprises but foreign firms also complained about the time-consuming administrative procedures in the city.

A representative of chipmaker Intel Products Vietnam, which operates at the Saigon Hi-Tech Park, said that the park’s one-door service had turned unattractive; the firm had to wait for months to get administrative procedures processed.