Building a transparent and favorable legal environment for businesses

(Chinhphu.vn) - The leader of the Ministry of Justice emphasized that it is necessary to focus on real "bottlenecks" from legal regulations, thereby building a transparent and favorable legal environment for businesses.

Building a transparent and favorable legal environment for businesses. Illustrative photo

Legal and institutional issues hinder production capacity

Recently at the workshop "Identifying difficulties and obstacles due to legal regulations in production and business activities and recommendations", many associations, industries, and business representatives spoke out about the difficulties caused by unreasonable administrative procedures such as pre-inspection and post-inspection mechanisms in the field of food safety, import tax refunds, etc.

The issue of legal institutions hindering production capacity is deeply recognized from both the perspective of state management and enterprises. Mr. Nguyen Hong Chung, Vice President and General Secretary of the Vietnam Industrial Park Finance Association, shared the bottlenecks, especially the overlap and long processing time of some important procedures, causing significant difficulties for investors. For example, the overlap and inconsistency between the Investment Law, Land Law, Construction Law, Environmental Protection Law, etc.; problems related to tax policies, customs procedures, etc.

Thereby, Mr. Chung recommended urgently reviewing, amending and supplementing relevant laws, decrees and circulars to ensure consistency, synchronization and transparency, with the goal of creating a connected process, minimizing time for investors.

At the same time, research and build a centralized national legal database platform that is easy to look up and regularly updates legal regulations related to investment and business so that businesses can access information in the most convenient and accurate way.

In particular, building a "legal one-stop shop" system will be a necessary condition for reform from process to mechanism. According to Mr. Chung, if licensing steps are digitized and integrated, it will create a transparent process, reduce procedural costs and promote investment confidence in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Mr. Le Ba Nam Anh, Director of Strategy & Development of Masan Group, said that the mineral industry is facing tax and fee costs accounting for 40%-60% of revenue, much higher than the international average of 3%-8%. The reason, he pointed out, is that the legal system is not consistent, and even has contradictory regulations.

Specifically, businesses must simultaneously pay mineral exploitation rights fees (according to the 2024 Law on Geology and Minerals) and resource taxes (according to the 2009 Law on Resource Tax). "The nature is the same, but the regulations are in two different laws, causing duplication and difficulties for businesses," Mr. Nam Anh emphasized.

In addition, deeply processed products, in line with the Party and Government's policy of increasing the value of resources, are subject to export taxes higher or equal to those of raw products, which is contrary to Resolution No. 10/NQ-TW dated February 10, 2022 of the Politburo on strategic orientations for geology, minerals and mining industry to 2030, with a vision to 2045.

In addition, according to Decree 181/2025/ND-CP detailing the implementation of a number of articles of the Law on Value Added Tax, many deeply processed mineral products are not eligible for value added tax refunds when exported, causing the competitiveness of Vietnamese enterprises to decline in the international market. Therefore, all of these need to be amended synchronously with the Law on Geology and Minerals 2024 to create an effective legal corridor, promoting sustainable exploitation with high added value.

Coordinate to remove institutional "bottlenecks"

Listening to the difficulties of enterprises, Deputy Minister of Justice Nguyen Thanh Tu said that over the past time, many rounds of reviewing difficulties and obstacles caused by legal regulations have been organized. However, for many reasons, especially the way of operating "asking - giving" and "having consensus among ministries and branches", the removal always encounters obstacles right from the first step.

According to Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Tu, for the law amendment process to be effective, it is necessary to focus on real bottlenecks, instead of just struggling with individual cases. "The problems of specific cases have their own handling mechanisms. But here, the problems stemming from the provisions of the law itself need determination and focus to be resolved," said Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Tu.

It is known that the Central Steering Committee on institutional and legal improvement is reviewing and collecting difficulties and obstacles caused by legal regulations in production and business activities and proposing solutions. This is an opportunity to amend and improve the law in the most practical way.

The determination and synchronization of the entire political system in institutional reform, especially the business legal system, has been clearly demonstrated. The goal is to build a more transparent, stable and favorable investment and business environment for enterprises. The issue now is implementation, urgently reviewing and removing difficulties caused by legal regulations.

Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Tu affirmed that Resolution 66 of the Politburo sets out clear requirements to fundamentally remove legal bottlenecks in 2025. From now until the end of the year, the Ministry of Justice will coordinate to propose amendments to important laws such as the Investment Law, Land Law, Planning Law, etc. to submit to the National Assembly at the October 2025 session. For urgent issues, a special mechanism can be applied through a Government Resolution.

Dieu Anh

Source: https://baochinhphu.vn/xay-dung-moi-truong-phap-ly-minh-bach-thuan-loi-cho-doanh-nghiep-102250715123748513.htm