Good Regulatory Practices to Support Small and Medium Enterprises in Southeast Asia
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can find it challenging to cope and comply with regulations and adapt regulatory changes. Good regulatory practice (GRP) helps create a stable and enabling regulatory environment for investment, trade, and entrepreneurhsip, and thus supports healthy economies and regional competitiveness. This report is the first comprehensive stock-taking of GRP implementation in Southeast Asia to support local SMEs and their integration into global value chains. For each of the ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the report provides examples of GRP tools and approaches in areas such as administrative burden reduction, e-government, regulatory impact assessment, ex post evaluation, and stakeholder consultation. The report also includes an overview of collective efforts pursued at the ASEAN level to promote the GRP agenda across the region.
Viet Nam
Viet Nam has undertaken impressive efforts to improve the efficiency of its administration and administrative processes, including streamlining business and investment regulatory frameworks. The government has introduced mandatory regulatory impact assessments in the development of legal documents and lawmakers are required to identify the likely distributional effects of new regulations, especially through the consultation process. Impact evaluations of existing regulations have also been conducted in the past years, although not systematically. Viet Nam has recently introduced a new small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) support law in 2017, which consolidates and overwrites all previous laws and regulations related to SMEs. A dedicated SME Development and Promotion Council is responsible for co-ordinating inputs from various ministries and agencies involved in SME development, as well as advising the Prime Minister related policies and instruments. The government is also making good progress in building its e‑customs portals and National Single Window towards convergence with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Single Window.