Ha Noi, 16 June 2022 - Enterprises still experienced many difficulties when participating in local bidding.   This is one of the key findings of a survey released at today’s workshop on “Public procurement from business perspective” jointly organized by the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP), with the support from the Australian Aid.

 “This survey aims to understand challenges that business community is facing in public procurement at localities, making recommendations on solutions to these challenges to improve transparency, effectiveness and efficiency of public procurement legal framework and law enforcement for improvement of business environment in Viet Nam,” said Mr. Dau Anh Tuan, Member of the Standing Committee, Deputy Secretary General of VCCI.

The survey focuses on assessing two main issues in public procurement: (1) assessment of enterprises on the process of implementing the procedures of public procurement in the localities; and (2) assessment of the settlement of petitions, complaints, and denunciations.

The most common obstacles that enterprises encountered are tight deadline for submission of bids; lack of publicity of the bidding invitation; as well as unusual difficulties in the conditions for contract performance, criteria for evaluation of bidders, conditions and terms for contract execution, and purchasing of the bidding document. These issues are more common with businesses participating in bids of public medical service providers.

In the meantime, enterprises are still hesitant in choosing the method of re-evaluating the contractor selection results and any other relevant matter during the contractor selection process. In the case of the firms choosing the aforementioned, the survey results show that enterprises that have a long period of operation had their case settled more appropriately in comparison to newly established enterprises.

One of the main reasons for businesses to not request for a re-evaluation when they encounter problems is that the firms feel significantly concerned about the complicated procedures and processes. Other reasons reported by enterprises are incurred cost exceeding gained benefit, concern about unfair treatment in future bids, and lack of belief in the ability of the responsible agencies in appropriately settling the case.

The survey recommends amending the Law on Bidding in the direction of enhancing publicity and transparency in public procurement through increasing the use of competitive and public bidding forms and publicizing bidder selection results and contracts combined with maximizing and optimizing high technology (the public procurement system, bidding through e-procurement) in organizational activities and bidding management.

At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen the supervision of public procurement by improving the efficiency of inspection, examination, and auditing activities for both procuring entities, businesses, and procurement management agencies.   In addition, local competent agencies need to focus on the quality of solving problems and complaints of enterprises participating in bidding through the establishment of independent mechanisms.

“Transparency and digitalization of public procurement, including in the health sector, have become a top priority of the Vietnamese Government to ensure sustainable development goals. This is even more critical in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic for effective and efficient response to the crisis and for speedy economic recovery,” Mr. Patrick Haverman, UNDP Deputy Resident Representative, highlighted at the workshop. “As businesses play a key role in promoting good practices in corporate governance, transparency, and business integrity, I hope that fruitful discussions at the workshop today will create the foundation for future interventions with active participation of the business community to help build an effective, digitalized, and transparent public procurement system in Viet Nam.” (Read full speech)

The survey is the result of a joint VCCI-UNDP project with the support by the Australian Aid to understand the experience and perception of enterprises in public procurement activities in localities, especially in the health sector.  The report uses data from questions integrated into the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) survey in 2021, which is a large-scale annual enterprise survey conducted by VCCI in Viet Nam over the years.