TVP Steel Joint Stock Company in Long An Province. More than 2,230 administrative procedures have been simplified since 2021. — VNA/VNS Photo Bùi Giang

HÀ NỘI — The Government Office said that efforts must be enhanced to further simplify business regulations and create a favourable environment for enterprises.

Director of the Administrative Procedures Control Agency Ngô Hải Phan said that the results of the simplification of business regulations had not met the Government’s requirements.

Some ministries had not updated changes in regulations adequately, accurately and timely on their portals, he said. Many remained slow in raising proposals for simplifying business regulations to the Prime Minister.

Although the Government’s Resolution No. 68/NQ-CP dated May 12, 2020, about the programme to reduce and simplify business regulations in the 2020-25 period had been in effect for three years, which targeted to simplify at least 20 per cent of the business regulations, some ministries had not submitted their simplification plan to the Government, he said.

Phan said that these problems were caused by the lack of drastic measures and the lack of active cooperation between relevant ministries and agencies, as well as the lack of accountability.

He said that to effectively implement and create breakthroughs in institutional reforms, Phan urged ministries and agencies to hasten the effort of simplifying business regulations following Resolution No. 68.

It was necessary to consult associations, businesses and those to be affected by the business regulation simplification plan to thoroughly remove regulations which were creating administrative burdens on production and business, he said. He stressed that simplifying business regulations did not mean erecting new barriers to businesses.

The Ministry of Justice said that during the past two years, the ministry focused on reviewing administrative procedures for simplification. From 2021-22, the ministry slashed 43 regulations.

The Ministry of Information and Communications said that the ministry was encountering difficulties in calculating compliance costs.

Statistics of the Administrative Procedures Control Agency showed that in the first six months of this year, 92 regulations residing in eight legal documents were simplified or reduced, bringing the total number of regulations which were simplified or reduced from 2021 to date to 2,234 in 179 legal documents.

As of June 20, the existing regulations updated on the portal about business regulations at the address https://thamvanquydinh.gov.vn totalled 17,845 regulations. — VNS