Đinh La Thăng, the Secretary of the HCM City Party Committee meets with foreign investors in the city yesterday. — Photo vneconomy

HCM CITY (VNS) — Government agencies and enterprises should both be “ethical” while discussing complaints related to red tape, Đinh La Thăng, the Secretary of the HCM City Party Committee, said while meeting with foreign investors in the city yesterday.

Executives from foreign-invested companies expressed their unhappiness with administrative procedures, saying working with the customs and tax departments affected their business.

Export and import procedures involve multiple agencies and numerous documents, they complained.     

But Nguyễn Hữu Nghiệp, deputy head of the HCM City customs department, claimed that when a company imports a shipment, it spends almost 72 percent of the time working with ministries and just three minutes with customs officials.

Thăng instructed the customs department to resolve all complaints made at the meeting within a week and organise regular meetings with companies to understand their difficulties.

Nghiệp promised both tasks would be carried out.

Thăng reminded city officials that helping foreign firms also enables the city to achieve its socio-economic targets, and urged the foreign investors to express their opinions with regard to the city’s development.

He appreciates the contributions made by all enterprises, domestic and foreign, he said, promising to create favourable conditions for them to operate efficiently.

While the city administration needs to be transparent, enterprises need to be “ethical” for their co-operation to be effective, he said.

In the context, he said the city is moving towards e-governance to improve transparency.

He called on foreign firms to expand, bring in new technologies and treat their employees well in terms of salary, accommodation, and social insurance.

“Enterprises often complain that the quality of human resources is low or there are not quality workers to recruit, but [if workers are treated well] you will not worry about a human resource shortage.”

Nguyễn Thành Phong, Chairman of the city People’s Committee, said the target is to make HCM City an economic and cultural hub of South-east Asia.

The key to achieving the target lies in improving the quality of growth and resolving issues related to infrastructure, the investment environment and administrative reforms, he said.

According to a report from the Department of Planning and Investment, between 1988 and 2015 the city licensed 5,854 foreign projects that are still in operation with a combined investment of over US$40 billion.

Last year it attracted FDI worth $4.5 billion, up more than 38 percent from 2014 and representing 19.8 percent of the country’s $22.76 billion FDI.

Singapore is the city’s biggest foreign investor with $8.7 billion, followed by Malaysia with $5.8 billion.

The property sector has attracted the largest amount of FDI at over $14 billion. — VNS