Employees work on blood pressure meters on a production line at the foreign-invested Key Plastics Co,Ltd. in the southern province of Binh Duong. Viet Nam is focusing on improving its business environment for the next two years. — VNA/VNS Photo Duong Chi Tuong

HA NOI (VNS) — The Prime Minister will focus on improving the business environment and strengthening the economy's ability to compete in 2015 and 2016.

Key areas of a Government resolution released yesterday include pushing for reforms to reduce time-consuming and wasteful administrative procedures, enhancing governmental offices' transparency and accountability, and adopting regulations that are in accordance with international rules.

Another high priority is raising the country's business environment indicator to higher than the ASEAN average.

In addition, the Government will also strive to reduce its average tax-filing time to 121.5 hours per year (from 872 hours in 2013 and 537 hours in 2014) and raise the number of businesses that complete online tax applications to 95 per cent.

Advancements in science and technology would help with the restructuring of the agriculture sector, according to the resolution. The sector must also enhance product quality and competitiveness, while ensuring food security and sustainable development.

The Government also made other superior value-adding industries like tourism, finance and telecommunications priorities in the national development programme.

More State-own enterprises would be restructured. The Government aims to adapt them according to the principles of the market economy. But preferential policies would also be created to stimulate private growth.

Special policies and mechanisms would also be established to level the playing field between large State-owned enterprises and small-to-medium-sized enterprises. Firms would also be encouraged to pour more capital into research and development.

Ministries, sectors, cities and provinces were ordered to take steps to improve their investment and business environments, and resolve any impediments in the implementation of administrative procedures.

The new resolution also recommended the privatisation of a number of public services. It advocated for giving key sectors such as education, health care and technology more autonomy.

The Government was to run a pilot programme to test a number of projects, using the public-social partnership approach.

(See Page 13 for more discussions on measures to improve Viet Nam business environment and competitiveness). — VNS