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Workshop discusses how to raise provincial competitiveness
How to improve southern Binh Duong province’s business environment and competitiveness was the main theme of a workshop held on May 5.
The workshop, the first of its kind in the province, suggested that the province to focus its reform on five major areas: workforce training, private sector development services, business entry costs, informal charges, and legal institutions to improve its competitiveness.
IT also provided a thorough understanding of the 2008 provincial competitiveness index (PCI) ranking as well as discussed measures to support private sector development and the opportunities for effective reform.
“The investment environment in Binh Duong is regarded as very positive, not only because of the number of investors, the flow of investment funds and the high disbursement rate, but also because its enterprises are considered competitive and dynamic,” President of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) Vu Tien Loc said.
Binh Duong was the only province to top the PCI for three consecutive years since the launch of the index in 2005. In 2008, it ranked second after Da Nang , in the overall national standings.
The PCI, jointly designed and implemented by VCCI and the USAID-financed Vietnam Competitiveness Initiative (VNCI), is now in its fourth year. The PCI measures economic governance in all Vietnam’s 63 cities and provinces based on their business environment for private sector development, with key factors in competitiveness such as market entry costs, land access and security, legal institutions, informal charges and other issues critical for businesses being taken into account.
The PCI initiative, has in many ways, become the voice of Vietnam ’s private sector. “It is very encouraging that local governments such as Binh Duong have taken the PCI findings seriously and made enormous changes to their economic policies to encourage local governance reform and private sector growth,” said VNCI Project Director Jim Winkler.
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