Ho Chi Minh City tries to reduce red tape

Ho Chi Minh City tries to reduce red tape

By Tran Khanh

SINGAPORE: Since 1992, the Vietnamese government has been making efforts to reform its inefficient and over-staffed bureaucracy. But five years later, both Vietnamese and foreigners living in the country continue to be weary of the red tape. The bureaucracy was so bad for foreign investors that the authorities became worried it may be driving them away.

Last year, Ho Chi Minh City spearheaded a campaign to slice the red tape. Officials borrowed the popular concept of one-stop service and tried it out in three districts of the city. The Vietnamese name of this program is mot cua mot dau which translates as "one stop, one stamp". "One stop" means people need only go to one address while "one stamp" is aimed at fixing those ridiculous situations when an application has to be stamped with so many endorsing seals that they take up more space than the text.

The trial was quite successful although its critics and local officials have pointed out in the Vietnamese media that problems were not just at the district level; a matter resolved quickly at that lower level would still be delayed when the documents get stuck at the level of the city.

In the wake of that, Ho Chi Minh City seeks to expand the "one stop, one stamp" program to include the whole city. In a January media interview, the city's Party Secretary Truong Tan Sang said he was aiming to have 1997 as the breakthrough year for administrative reforms.

The extended program will focus on five government departments which are most crucial to the city's economic boom: Investment & Planning Office, Construction Office, Land Survey Department, Property Department and the Chief Architect's Office.

All of them have been charged with first introducing their own one-door policy and as of the third quarter of this year, they should all gather together to operate a one stop service at the city's People's Committee. They will also have to liaise with each other to sort out problems rather than expect the public to run around talking to the different departments.

It is too early yet to say how well "one stop, one stamp" will succeed for the whole city but the media attention has provided a better understanding of the extent and the complexity of the problems involved in the policy of administrative reforms.

For instance, the media reported that in the rural outskirts of the city, citizens seeking to buy land will have to go through 14 steps to obtain approval. For Vietnam's aspiring homegrown entrepreneurs, approval for an investment project can take up to 16 steps involving 14 different departments.

Thus, the officially decreed deadline for approval may be 20 days; in reality, nothing is achieved in less than six months. For foreign investors, the application also does its rounds of 12 different departments involving 16 steps all the way from the locality in which the project is sited to the central government. During this entire process, the application is presented four times to the People's Committee of the city. Hence foreign investors may wait up to two years for project approval.

City officials representing diverse interests have made known their hopes and worries about the reforms. For Vo Van Thon, the director of the city's Justice Department, they cannot be carried out in isolation, separated from legal reforms. He noted that the legal framework for tidying up red tape by defining clearly lines of responsibility was not yet in place. Secondly, unclear laws regularly force administrators into the position of making up rules on a case-by-case basis. That should not be the case. The public servant's duty was not to make laws, said Thon; that should be left to legislators.

The inadequacy of the law was also raised by Pham Thanh Hoa, who heads a committee set up by the city authority to tackle administrative reforms and is also credited as the chief architect of the "one stop, one stamp" idea. He pointed out that a law in Vietnam always began as a broad statement of intentions, lacking many key details for sensible implementation.

Civil servants have to wait for a"nghi dinh (directive) to flesh things out in more concrete terms. Following that, a more detailed thong tu (guidelines) is issued. There are laws which had been passed for three years but many of their articles are still waiting to be implemented because the relevant minister has not yet issued the thong tu.

Hoa also noted the conflict of interests between ministries which complicated the administrative process. When a minister issued guidelines for a piece of legislation, he is guided by the following need: how to institute procedures which will increase the power of his ministry.

Such a situation is a major source of the country's multiplying bureaucracy. In the area of land use alone there have been some 400 directives since 1989. It has provided the heads of city-level government departments with a defense for the red tape they generated; they had no choice but to follow whatever rules were made by the ministries at the national level even if it did not please them to be implementing such unsatisfactory policies.

Given these fundamental problems waiting to be solved, Party Secretary Sang of the city has sounded a cautionary note even as he is determined to see a breakthrough for administrative reforms this year. He believed the effort by Ho Chi Minh City would go some way towards reducing unnecessary procedures in many public services but a systemic overhaul required central effort.

Whatever the prospects for success and failure, it is useful to see the whole process of administrative reforms since 1992 in perspective.

First, the pace may be slow but there is some order and direction in the overall development . The initial phase saw the cutting of excessive manpower in the city amounting to 6,000 civil servants and 5,000 employees of state-sponsored social organizations.

The current effort marks a new but inevitable step from manpower reduction to making the reforms helpful to the users, that is, the public who comes into contact with the bureaucracy. If it works, it would increase confidence in the authorities.

The second factor is the transparency of this exercise with officials talking incisively about both the objectives and the obstacles.

Thirdly, the media is being used to focus public attention on bureaucrats and those parts of the system which lag behind in reforms and this will generate pressure for change.

Dr. Tran Khanh is a researcher at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Hanoi.

Window: When a minister issued guidelines for a piece of legislation, he is guided by the following need: how to institute procedures which will increase the power of his ministry.