Almost VND400 trillion (US$17.48 billion) was given out in investment and licences to 71 projects last week. The decisions were made at an investment and development conference in Ha Noi. Mac Quoc Anh, vice chairman cum general secretary of Ha Noi Association of Small-and-medium sized enterprise (SMEs) told the press about the city’s efforts.

What are changes of Ha Noi after 10 years of merger?

Ha Tay Province was merged with Ha Noi in 2008. The capital city now has 30 districts, 584 wards and towns with a population of 10 million people. Ha Noi has significantly changed..

Up to 65 per cent of the city’s households are working in the agricultural area. Currently Ha Noi has also developed farm businesses, putting Ha Noi at the top in the country in this field.

With a relatively large population compared to the rest of Viet Nam, Ha Noi is the centre for politics and economics as well as an important axis in ASEAN.

Ha Noi has developed more than 20 per cent of enterprises and leads the country in State budget collection.

In 2017, the total State budget collection of the city was VND194 trillion and living conditions were also improved and the GDP contribution to the country, huge.

More emphasis has been put on improving clean water, public buildings and roads, particularly the ringroads No 2 and 3 , with ringroad 3.5 in the pipeline.

Policies have been focused on solving difficulties businesses face such as debt exemption and social security contribution reductions.

It has continuously improved the provincial competitiveness index (PCI) and Ha Noi jumped from the top 24 to the top 10 of provinces with highest PCI.

Work has also started to improve the code of conduct for officials and civil servants and the time taken to grant land use certificates has also dropped from 14 days to just one week.

Ha Noi also shortens time for granting business registration from 21 days to now just three days thanks to an online facility.

How do you assess Ha Noi’s support to businesses over the past few years?

Ha Noi has been co-operating and actively supporting businesses in the city and the neighboring provinces. Firstly, Ha Noi has assigned its Centre for Trade and Investment Promotion and relevant agencies to help enterprises participate in co-operative chains with other localities.

At present, trade exchange is very important for Ha Noi’s companies. This means Ha Noi can partner with businesses in the provinces. It also promoted its work with trade counselors both here and abroad to establish supply chains of main products to help them in their integration. In addition, Ha Noi has upgraded administrative procedures from level three to level four to eliminate difficulties. Ha Noi issued codes of conduct of civil servants to improve working culture of public officials and employees, improving PCI from 14th to 13th position last year.

What are difficulties Ha Noi’s enterprises face and how has the capital resolved the issues?

Currently, the size of enterprises in Ha Noi is large compared to the whole country. Ha Noi now has 250,000 firms. With such a large number it means there are a lot of difficulties to encounter. At present, 90 per cent of the city’s enterprises are SMEs. With the implementation of e-government and resolutions No 35 and 19/2018 promulgated by the Prime Minister, Ha Noi is determined to support the business community, but there are still many difficulties.

Firstly, it is the issue of granting land use certificates. Enterprises in the city want to expand production and business scale. The land use right certificate would help firms expand their scale and use assets to access bank loans.

Another difficulty is that the trust loans are easily accessible to companies. Recently, many businesses which have good activities and are contributing to the city’s social security want loans with preferential interest rates.

Businesses in the city are also facing with production problems. SMEs expect to have a production site in industrial zones of 1,000 to 3,000sq.m. It will also be suitable for startups.

Enterprises are also looking forward to improvements in administrative procedures as there are many steps involved in land use rights and investment certification. Recently Ha Noi has taken drastic measure to resolve the issue, but there are still issues at grassroots levels.

Ha Noi has also followed Resolution No 5, which considers private economic sector as the momentum for economic development.

In the three consecutive years, the city has organised investment and development co-operation conferences. First of all, Ha Noi has been calling for the private sector to invest in its key projects, and social security projects to socialise investment activities, promoting build-transfer (BT), build-operate-transfer (BOT) to help the capital call for investment.

In addition to big and FDI companies investing in the city, Ha Noi is very interested in attracting private enterprises in the city and neighbouring provinces. Ha Noi also wants to call for SMEs and support industry firms to follow big corporations from Japan, South Korea, the US and Europe with strong financial capacity and experiences to help its businesses integrate and develop. — VNS