“Some communes have reported having 30 kinds of formalities, but then after being urged to carefully do statistics, they said they had 50,” complained an official from Hanoi.

Citizens waiting at the Hanoi Department of Planning and Investment.

The Chief of the Hanoi People’s Committee Office, Nguyen Thinh Thanh, said there are different numbers of the kinds of formalities because some state agencies put many formalities into one. For instance, the Hanoi Department of Construction reported the formality of granting construction licenses. But this type of formalities comprises many secondary formalities.

For this reason, Hanoi was criticized as being slow in making statistics of administrative formalities to serve Projects 30 on administrative reforms.

So far, Hanoi has completed the statistics of one sixth of the total types of administrative formalities, while the deadline for this task is June.

The chief of the Macro-research Division of the Central Institute for Economic Research and Management, Nguyen Dinh Cung, said it is difficult for perform administrative reforms if we do not know how many types of formalities we have. It is estimated that there are 6,500 formalities related to citizens and enterprises, but many ministries insist that they have only have a handful of formalities.

Cung illustrated that there are 14 “major branches” of administrative formalities for the “tree” of the construction field, with many sub-branches, leaves and flowers. While the list of administrative reforms is not finalized, it is hard to consider which formalities are to be eliminated and which are to be kept.

Besides technical problems, the administrative reform project is facing hindrances from state officials who see complicated administrative reforms as opportunities to claim money from people and enterprises.

The Vice Director of the IDS Research and Development Institute, Pham Chi Lan, said: “Has administrative reform has been a great fuss for decades because of sluggish machinery and groups of interest?”

According to recent research by Professor Martin Painter, Dr. Ha Hoang Hop, and Chu Quang Khoi, under an UNDP’s project on administrative reform, Project 30 worked out as an ambitious goal of eliminating unnecessary administrative formalities, which are troublesome and can lead to corruption or power abuse. It is illegal to create sub-formalities but it is difficult to control.

These experts warned that “The success of Project 30 is a significant test for successfully implementing the process of administrative reform in Vietnam. But if it fails, this will be a big set-back and it will encourage immutable interests to oppose against reforms.”

Le Nhung