As many as 80 percent of Vietnamese businesses have never been asked about drafts for legal documents, Dau Anh Tuan, Head of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI)'s Legal Department said on August 12. Speaking at a seminar entitled, "Building Policies in the New Context – Opportunity and Challenge for Businesses," held by the VCCI in Hanoi, Tuan said more than 1,000 legal documents were issued annually in Vietnam, and 70 percent of these were related to businesses. However, there were few businesses that were asked to contribute their ideas to the draft legal documents.

He said the businesses should contribute their opinion when they meet difficulties and encounter shortcomings that originate from any unreasonable regulation, or when the State is preparing to issue a new policy related to their businesses, or when the businesses have certain ideas on policy to make their business more effective.

The participation in policy formulation will help enterprises in improving the ease of doing business as well as reducing operational costs besides having a thorough grasp of legal documents to apply them in the future, said Tuan.

Citing the example of sea transportation businesses, Tuan said they had mobilised opinion to abolish a regulation on archiving transport documents and replacing it with electronic archives. This proposal was approved, and helped reduce the management work from 208 days to below 10 days each year.

However, it's not an opportunity that many small and medium enterprises get.

Dao Cong Duy, General Director of Chau A Joint Stock Company, which specialises in designing and building glass items for buildings nationwide, said he was willing to take part in formulating drafts for legal documents, but never had such an opportunity.

"Not being given a chance leads to the fact that we fail to update new legal documents related to our import and export businesses," said Duy, adding, "Legal documents are always related to administrative procedures. We always lose time and effort to undertake same procedures again when we go in for a new business and have to deal with a new legal document."

Duy told Vietnam News that although new legal documents had been updated on websites, sometimes also publicised on television programmes, it's not easy for small enterprises to update themselves about these changes in time.

"The Enterprise Law has seen many changes, but I am sure that not every business has caught up with them. As for small enterprises, many of them are not able to set up a legal section to study legal documents related their business, leading to the fact that they fail to avail of new opportunities as well as deal with challenges in the future," said Duy.

However, Tuan said not every enterprise wanted to take part in proposing draft legal documents because of money and time involved.

🔯 At the seminar, the VCCI and the Public Participation and Accountability Facilitation Fund introduced a project on establishing a suitable and effective policy for consultants for small businesses.-VNA