Hanoi (VNA) - The Hanoi People’s Committee recently issued a directive on improvingthe city’s Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) in 2021, given the fact thatmany of its sub-indexes have tended towards decline even though its overallposition in the national rankings has remained unchanged in recent years.

For thethird year in a row the capital city stood in ninth place among Vietnam’s 63 cities andprovinces in the 2020 PCI rankings, with a total score of 66.93 points, up 1.13points from 2019.

The rankingswere unveiled earlier this year by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry(VCCI) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Among the10 sub-indexes, the capital earned its highest score, 7.93 points, in the “timecosts” index, followed by “labour and training” (7.85 points), “entry costs” (6.74points), and “business support services” (6.68 points).

Hanoi has madeefforts to reduce informal charges, promote fair competition, enhance transparency,and boost the proactivity of city leadership.

VCCIChairman Vu Tien Loc described Hanoi’s continual presence in the top 10 as anencouraging result, according to the Nhan dan (People) newspaper, as the city is oneof the two localities with the largest number of enterprises in Vietnam.

Itssustained position and higher score also indicates the city’s stableperformance in administrative reform and improvements to its investment andbusiness climate, he said.

AlthoughHanoi is viewed by many enterprises as having a good investment and businessclimate, the unchanged ninth place, with some sub-indexes falling, has stoppedthe city from reaching a higher position in the rankings, the newspaper pointedout.

Forexample, its “policy bias” sub-index rose from 5.39 points in 2019 to 6.06points last year, but it ranked just 52nd among the 63 localities in thisregard. “Proactivity of provincial leadership” increased only 0.1 percent to 6.06points, putting the city at 44th place in this index.

Meanwhile, the city experienced a substantial fall in two important sub-indexes: “entry costs”(down 51 places to 61st) and “access to land” (down 15 places to 56th).

Even the “labourand training” sub-index fell slightly, by 0.06 percent to 7.85 points, ranking fourth nationwide, Nhan dan noted.

To raise thePCI ranking, the Hanoi People’s Committee has issued Directive No 14/CT-UBND onimproving the city’s PCI performance in 2021.

The committee demandedthat departments, sectors, and district-level authorities invest resources indealing with the sub-indexes experiencing a downward trend and those ranking“low” or “mid-low” last year.

They weretold to take drastic measures to raise the indexes of “entry costs” and “accessto land”, which plunged last year.

Inparticular, they need to have all business registration dossiers handledonline, ensure the settlement of business registration procedures completed onschedule or ahead of schedule, publicise such procedures, increase the trainingof civil servants to boost the quality of guidance provided to people andenterprises, and press on with streamlining land-related administrativeprocedures.

Thenorthern province of Quang Ninh retained its top position in the 2020 PCIrankings, followed by the southern provinces of Dong Thap, Long An, and BinhDuong.

The PCIreport has been published annually by the VCCI and the USAID since 2005 toassess the ease of doing business, economic governance, and administrativereform efforts by city and provincial governments to promote the development ofthe private sector.

Based ondata collected from enterprises, the PCI is viewed as “the common voice” of thebusiness community on the level of reform in various fields./.