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Office incompetence paves long road to business licenses
Businesses often wait several months for licenses thanks to inexperience and incompetence at the Ho Chi Minh City registration office.
H., who wished to remain anonymous, said she worked for a company producing concrete molds in District 12. The company wanted to open a new branch in Binh Chanh District, but could not obtain a license to do so.
The HCMC Department of Planning and Investment’s Business Registration Office explained that the Binh Chanh District authorities refused to grant the license due to environmental issues.
It took H. several visits to the registration office over a period of three months just to get the official written refusal notice, she said.
At a recent conference organized by the Ministry of Planning and Investment, lawyers said independent “brokers”, who wait outside the business registration office, prey on applicants by claiming they can get licenses in just a few days.
The brokers capitalize on poor services at the office and use personal connections or “under-the-table” means to get licenses processed fast.
Meanwhile, the staff at the office is generally inexperienced. More than half the staff have worked there for less than a year.
The Business Registration Office manager, Tran Thi Binh Minh, said each officer must process 18 applications every day.
But while experienced officers can handle 25 applications, the others often finish the day after only 10 documents have been handled, she said.
The office receives about 470 applications every day, she added.
A lawyer, who wished to remain anonymous, said many Business Registration Office employees are incompetent.
“Given the same issue, one officer interprets one way and another interprets it in a different way,” he said.
The HCMC Department of Planning and Investment said an extensive procedural reform this month would cut official license registration time from 10 to five days.
One of the measures in the reform would make it unnecessary to wait for district authority approval. Instead, the districts would inform the Department of Planning and Investment of their particular restrictions and guidelines and the department would then handle the approval process.
Thanhnien
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