One of the world's leading economic advisory groups, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), has praised the success of a two-year-old project to simplify State bureaucratic procedures in Viet Nam.
Known as Project 30, the three-year project was establied by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in 2007.
Under it, Viet Nam has already slashed about 30 per cent of all existing red tape.
The head of an OECD delegation that recently visited Ha Noi, Josef W.Konvitz, acknowledged that the project was playing a criti cal role in reforming public servic procedures.
Accordingto the PM's special Task Force for Administrative Procedures Reform, Konvitz said that Project 30 had already reviewed and simplified 10,000 sets of communal adminis trative procedures and 700 sets of district-level documents, slashing them down to a bare 63 sets of documents each.
This amounted to about 30 per cent of the red tape in all bureaucratic procedures.
Konvitz warned that the challenge now was to complete the reforms otherwise the situation could revert back to the complicated ways of the past.
During a working session with Vietnamese officials to assess progress, Konvitz acknowledged the commitment of the Government to achieving the reforms.
"Everybody has been working hard for the success of the project," Konvitz said.
"A few people doing business in Viet Nam have told me they are glad the project is underway and are grateful for being consulted on their experiences with administrative procedures."
Ngo Hai Phan, deputy head of a working group set up to initiate the reforms throughout the nation, said that all ministries, industries and localities nation-wide had managed to review administrative procedures as required by the Prime Minister.
The OECD and the Government Office are now assessing the progress of the reforms from 2007 to 2010. The results will be a reference for completing the programme from 2011 to 2020.
An OECD report is scheduled to be presented in November./.