VietNamNet Bridge – Vuong Duc Hinh, Chief of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) Secretariate, spoke to the newspaper Hai Quan (Customs) on how the ministry is implementing the national administrative reform.

Illustrative image -- File photo

Will you please share with us some of the successes of the National Single Window (NSW) in the implementation of the national programme of administrative reform?

Through implementation of the national single window, 27,930 dossiers have been received by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, of which 22,022 documents have been handled, including granting licences, while the remaining dossiers are being handled.

Basically, at the beginning we met some difficulties and challenges in the implementation of the NSW. But now things are going rather smoothly. In the past, the biggest challenge we confronted was the approved signature of the boss when he was not in the office. Now all things are done on computers, including the boss’s digital signature.

For enterprises, the NSW has also saved time and money. If in the past, after filling in all the required paperwork, they had to send it to us by couriers, now everything, from A to Z is done on computers.

I should say, thanks to the NSW, paperwork has been streamlined and has been highly appreciated by enterprises.

What are the challenges the MARD has been facing in implementing the NSW?

The biggest challenge we are facing is the issue of financial settlement. Enterprises still have to go to the banks to pay for services.

We hope that the Ministry of Finance will soon come up with a solution to further facilitate conditions during the implementation of the NSW.

The NSW application is in a pilot phase. But if we want to apply it nation wide, it will be very difficulty as the capacity of Vietnamese enterprises is so different. Some are elite while many others are still illiterate about on-line work.

Last but not least, some trade partners, particularly those from the USA, EU, Japan and others have not accepted electronic licences. In these cases, Vietnamese enterprises still have to use paper licences. To solve this problem, we will instruct concerned departments within the MARD to contact their counterparts in those countries and find out the best way to free this bottle neck.

Do you think MARD will achieve its target of having all nine administrative procedures in the NSW on line as of October 1st?

I don’t think we can reach that target.

We understand that it is too ambitious and will not be achieved. But we want all units involved in the trial period to do their best and then we will draw lessons learned before scaling up nation wide.

During the trial period, we have confronted many difficulties and challenges, both in the procedures and archive work. For example, should we use disks or store in the computer? This remains a question without an answer. At present, the MARD is in the process of developing an operation menu for the NSW application so that all departments or administrative units within the ministry will operate according to the same procedures.

Would you please further elaborate on how the NSW is being implemented in the Ministry?

We have instructed units participating in the pilot project to draw lessons learned and then scale it up to other units in the country. For example, at the Department of Plant Protection, the quarantine unit at the Noi Bai International Airport was selected for the pilot stage. Based on lessons learned there, we will then scale up into other centres nationwide.

As I have mentioned, in the pilot phase, nine administrative procedures were introduced. But in the remaining three months of 2016, we will introduce two more procedures. They are the quarantine certificates on the importation of animal and animal products (an estimated 25,000 dossiers per annum) and animal quarantine registration and animal products for importers into Viet Nam (an estimated 4,500 dossiers per annum). This will be done by the Department of Animal Health.

In addition, from 2016 to 2018, the MARD will launch another 28 administrative procedures through the NSW. Funding for this activity will come from the State budget with a total of about VND 80 billion ($ 3.6 million).        

VNS