Most Vietnamese happy with admin services, survey finds

Just 1.4% feel that civil servants make it difficult for them and this figure is even lower.5%, have been asked to pay bribes to expedite their procedures, according to the 2019 Administrative Reform Index (PAR) released by the Home Office on Tuesday.

The percentage of respondents who said that they had to travel many times to handle administrative procedures was also low, at 5.4 percent.

The survey included 20,000 civil servants and 36,000 citizens across 7 criteria: administrative reform management; administrative reform; improve staff quality; administrative apparatus reform; modernize the administrative system with the application of advanced technology; public finance reform; and building and organizing administrative institutions.

A large sum of money 44.4% of respondents expect government agencies to continue to simplify administrative procedures while 43% expect the processing time of administrative services to be further shortened.

Regarding service quality, 5.6% of participants said they hope to improve the service attitude of civil servants while 8%.6% want to improve the capacity of civil servants.

In this year's survey, 85.6% of respondents expressed satisfaction with the attitude of civil servants.

The State Bank of Vietnam topped the PAR Index for the fifth year in a row, ahead of 17 other state agencies including the Government Inspectorate and 16 ministries.

The bank gives a score of 95.4% out of 100, followed by the Ministry of Finance with 94.7 percent, Department of Justice with 90.1% and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development with 88.2 percent.

The Ministry of Transport scored the lowest score for the second year in a row of 80.5%, with the Ministry of Health, 80.6, Ministry of Information and Communications, 81.5 and Ministry of Sports, Culture and Tourism, 82.4, also in the bottom cluster.

Among 63 localities of the country, Quang Ninh topped the PAR index for the second year in a row with 90%, followed by the capital Hanoi with 84 points.6 and Dong Thap is the Mekong Delta province with 84.4 percent.

HCMC, the country's largest city and its key economic locomotive, rose three places from last year to seventh place with 83.5 percent.

In 2012, Quang Ninh, home to the UNESCO Historic Site of Ha Long Bay, established a specialized committee for investment promotion and investor support.In 2018, becoming the first locality in the country to merge district-level tax departments into several regional tax departments under the provincial tax department, saving time for both businesses and people.

It also reviews all administrative procedures to ensure that businesses and locals can handle their affairs in only one administrative center in each district.

Vietnam aims to climb 10-15 steps in the U.S.N.Global ranking of the E-Government Development Index and entering the top 4 in Southeast Asia by 2025.

In the biennial E-Government Development Index (EGDI) in 2018, Vietnam ranked 88/193 government with a score of 0.59, the highest so far.

The government has acted over the years on complaints from the public and investors that it takes too long to complete the administrative procedures and that the process involves too much paperwork.

One official study in 2018 found it can take up to 218 hours and cost VND64.1 million ($2,700) to complete an administrative procedure.