CAO BẰNG — The northern mountainous province of Cao Bằng has taken drastic measures to improve its business environment after it ranked at the bottom of 2016’s Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI).

In the PCI 2016 ranking, the province slipped five positions compared to the previous year.

Hoàng Xuân Ánh, chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, has asked all departments and sectors to review their working and to promote administrative reforms.

In the past few years, the province has made a lot of efforts to improve its business and investment environment and go up on the PCI.

Last year, it recorded a growth rate of 6.13 per cent, contributing around VNĐ1.4 trillion to the State budget. The rate of poor households in Cao Bằng also reduced by 4 per cent. Despite all this, the province’s ranking slipped as it scored poorly on criteria such as unofficial costs (3.34 points), dynamism (3.41 points), equal competition (3.77 points) and land access (4.78 points).

Nguyễn Thái Hà, director of the provincial Department of Planning and Investment, said the score was not totally accurate, especially for equal competition.

Of its nearly 2,000 companies, the province has only three State-owned enterprises (SOEs) and four foreign direct investment firms. That’s the reason it could not be said that Cao Bằng favoured SOEs, Hà said.

In addition, Cao Bằng has always been a poor locality, and thus has limited budget for land clearance for development of industrial parks, Hà explained. 

According to the provincial business asociation, PCI survey was conducted on less than half of the total businesses in the province and therefore could not reflect the situation in the province.

Hoàng Mạnh Ngọc, chairman of the provincial Young Entrepreneurs Association, said the PCI ranking reflected a part of the business environment. Cao Bằng should have synchronous solutions to improve the role of its administration and its business environment for sustainable development, he suggested. The province should also take steps to make enterprises more aware about the importance of the PCI ranking.

Chairman of the provincial People’s Commitee Ánh said improving business environment was an urgent task, adding that in the next PCI ranking, the province aimed to step up by 10 positons.

"We will continue to improve public administrative procedures, increasing transparency and reducing cost and time for people," he said.

All PCI criteria in which the province has scored low would be reviewed and the province would come up with specific solutions and assign responsibility for improvement to specific departments and agencies, Ánh said. — VNS