Many documents have been legalised in the past two years. This has been a chance for evaluation offices to check their constitution and legality. Could you comment on the results of the evaluation process?

Basically, legalised documents meet the requirements of publication. However, a large number of documents were found to be contrary to the law relating to economic aspects.
The number of these documents accounts for 4 to 5 per cent. Documents which do not have a guaranteed legal basis make up another 20 per cent. And documents that have been wrongly laid out account for 50 per cent.

According to initial evaluations, documents related to investment attraction preferences in localities have showed a number of regulations that are contrary to the law.

Business circles have complained that many legal documents are outdated and have not caught up with development in some economic aspects. What is your opinion?

This is one of the main weaknesses concerning contents of legal documents and economic management. Moreover, instructional documents are complicated and overlap, creating difficulties for companies and citizens.

The decree regulating the implementation of the State-owned Enterprise Law is an example. Substantiating regulations has been difficult especially when distributing after-tax profit for State-owned businesses in monopolised sectors. In many other cases, documents containing improper contents, especially those related to taxes and finance, have been difficult to implement.

For example, collecting tax based on the percentage of domestically produced motorbikes has proved difficult as has collecting business and personal income taxes for non-refundable ODA (Official Development Assistance) projects.

The current process of publishing legal documents has exposed inconsistencies. What do you think of this situation?

That is right. This has been one of the main obstacles affecting the quality of legal documents. The Ministry of Justice has tried to ensure that all documents are legal in their constitution and abide by the law system. However, the evaluation process is still lacking.

Therefore, in economic and social aspects, the government and ministries should promptly revise, supplement and issue new regulations and documents to create a synchronised and transparent legal basis.

What solutions do you foresee?

Improvement of the quality of legal documents is a bulky matter requiring a synchronised co-ordination among concerned offices.

Compilation offices should specify laws and decrees giving detailed regulations to ensure the law is immediately implemented to avoid issuing instructional documents.
Then, it is also necessary to ask for the participation and opinion of experts and social scientists in preparing law and document compilations and evaluations as well as to clearly define the responsibilities of compilation offices and participation authorities. As for the justice sector, this year, we will define the key tasks of checking and reforming evaluations and supervising the publication of legal documents as well as their implementation.

Source: VNECONOMY, 24/2/2006