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.