HÀ NỘI — The draft amendment to a decree concerning the production, especially for the food industry, adds many administrative procedures, causing difficulties for businesses, according to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).

VASEP has recently sent a document to the Deputy Prime Minister Lê Thành Long and ministries and agencies to comment on the draft amending Decree 15/2018/NĐ-CP, which details the implementation of some articles of the Law on Food Safety.

VASEP said that the draft decree creates new bottlenecks, causing difficulties for businesses while not providing more effective solutions to ensure food safety for people.

According to VASEP, the draft adds many requirements and regulations to all three groups of administrative procedures, including self-declaration, registering the announcement and re-registering the proclamation, which contains many unreasonable regulations inconsistent with international practices.

Meanwhile, many additional requirements in the draft procedures have nothing to do with food safety.

VASEP said that with the self-declaration procedure, the time needed for administration and documentations can cause business delays of at least three months and losses of trillions of đồng yearly. With the procedure for registering a declaration, the increased number of documents can also cost hundreds of billions of đồng each year and the number of additional days of implementation cannot be determined.

In addition, the transitional regulations require that registered products that are normally circulating on the market must also have additional records, increasing administrative procedures and causing costs in time and money for businesses.

VASEP estimates that about 460,600 products must be self-declared and more than 69,400 products must be re-registered (based on the number of products in 2022).

VASEP proposed that the Ministry of Health and the drafting committee study and remove unreasonable regulations, add appropriate management measures to ensure the new decree will not create bottlenecks for production and business and ensure food safety for the people as well as improve management efficiency.

Enterprises worry stricter regulations may have consequences

Commenting on the supplements to some articles of the Law on Product and Goods Quality drafted by the Ministry of Science and Technology, deputy director of the foreign affairs department of Canon Vietnam Đào Thị Thu Huyền said it may cause difficulties for businesses.

Regarding regulations on goods produced and circulated domestically, according to Huyền, the current regulations are much stricter than those applied in the most advanced countries in the world, but the draft law is even stricter.

For example, under the current regulations, applying traceability codes and electronic labels are not mandatory, but the draft makes them mandatory.

According to Huyền, implementing additional registration procedures to meet regulations (such as traceability codes and electronic labels) will mean difficulties for businesses, who will need more resources both in terms of staff and time, which in turn will lead to price increase. 

Therefore, the Canon Vietnam foreign affairs deputy director recommended that the draft should be amended, so that existing administrative procedures were reduced in line with those in advanced countries such as Japan, Korea, Europe and the US. Instead, the inspection of goods circulating in the market should be increased.

A representative of WinCommerce General Commercial Services Joint Stock Company also expressed concern about the draft, adding requirements on traceability of products and goods, product tracing and location tracing.

According to the retailer, with major challenges in deploying technology, increased investment costs will create financial pressure and affect the competitiveness of businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. This also leads to the inevitable consequence of increasing product prices, directly affecting the purchasing power of domestic consumers.

In addition, according to WinCommerce's representative, detailing traceability, including detailed information on storage and transportation facilities, for example, will also create difficulties when labeling goods.

Therefore, WinCommerce recommends that State agencies apply rules according to a roadmap, fitted to the business reality, as well as provide detailed instructions for businesses so that costs incurred can be minimised and the processes carried out efficiently. — VNS