With a few days left of the current government term (2016-21), Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc expects to hand down the best things for the new government and give it a head start for going forward.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc. Photo: Quang Hieu

The Vietnam PM shared his sentiment at an online meeting discussing the performance of Prime Minister’s task force in the past five years on March 16, while urging ministries and provinces/cities to complete pending works before a new government is sworn in.

“Human and legal factors are essential to realize the growth potential of a country,” Phuc said, adding specific measures are needed to spur the country’s development and keep public’s trust in the government.

Bearing this in mind, Phuc said the main priority in setting up the Prime Minister’s task force is to address bottlenecks that are restricting the country’s development.

The PM also stressed the task force is an initiative set up by the current government and under the authorization of the Prime Minister to speed up ongoing works, not an entity with overlapping functions with other ministries/agencies.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and members of the task force. Photo: Quang Hieu

In this regard, Phuc stated the task force is responsible to resolve the issue of “custom rules the law”, when localities or government agencies were ignoring instructions from the central government.

In this government term, the number of overdue tasks account for 1.8% of the total, down nearly 25% compared to the time before the task force was set up.

Phuc said the most challenging issue for the task force is to remove administrative procedures, which may result in affecting the interests of certain groups or individuals, but “this has to be done no matter how hard it is” he stressed.

“Inspection activities carried out by the task force helped enforce government’s directives  and enhance disciplinary orders among administrative units,” he noted.

Among other results, Phuc highlighted the efforts of the task force in perfecting legal framework and preventing policy profiteering that resulted barriers for growth.

In five-year operation, the task force had proposed the removal of 87 legal document on specialized inspection and obsolete business conditions.

Administrative reform and efforts towards the realization of e-government have been a priority in operation of the task force. As such, the adoption of four working platforms under the e-government helps save VND16.2 trillion (US$702 million) per year in social costs under OECD’s calculation.