Thang Văn Phúc, former Deputy Minister of Home Affairs

Thang Văn Phúc, former Deputy Minister of Home Affairs talks to the Government Portal about the plan to have a streamlined Government in the future.

Will you please explain a bit in detail about the plan to have a streamlined Government, and how will it operate efficiently and effectively?

The 1992 Constitution has stated clearly that Việt Nam will have a sovereign and socialist State of the people and for the people. And the Vietnamese economy will operate along the lines of a socialist-oriented economy, of the people and for the people. All resolutions on the country’s administrative reforms which were adopted at the National Party Congresses at VIII, IX, X, XI and XII have closely followed these guidelines.

The Comprehensive Program on Việt Nam Administrative Reform for the period from 2001-2010 and 2011-2020 has focused efforts to build an administration for the people and for an administration of a democratic state in the course of international integration.

In the meantime, we should switch the Government’s functions from central management and from micromanagement to macromanagement with more focus on reform of the national economic institutions along the line of the socialist oriented economy.

Does this mean that Việt Nam will gear toward having a multi-functional ministry?

Documents adopted at the IX, X, XI and XII National Party Congresses have all agreed on the need to have multi-functional ministries – an essential requirement to form a streamlined Government with fewer ministries – from 38 ministries before the year 1986 to 22 ministries after the year 2006.  Meanwhile the number of cabinet members has also dropped from 10 Deputy Ministers to 4 or 5. Such a streamlined government required much closer co-operation between government ministries and agencies in their operation.

Will you please talk a bit further about the plan to streamline the Government cabinet in the coming XV legislature (2021-2026)?

The most important task is to define clearly the power between offices of the National Assembly - the legislative body and the Government – the executive body and the judiciary body.

However, I just want to focus on the role of the Government as an executive body and the highest State administrative office.

The government has a role to implement the country’s objectives to make Việt Nam become an industrial nation

Will you please explain a bit further about having multi-functional ministries in Việt Nam?

Each country in the G7 group, have between 12 and 16 ministries – yet Switzerland, they have only seven ministries. This is a good lesson for Việt Nam to learn from. Right now, many studies have been conducted and have come up with criteria on how to create a Mega Ministry which will be assigned with different management functions in the fields of economics, society and others. This is food for thought for the National Assembly and government. And of course, it will take time and persistency. _VNS