VIETNAM: Hanoi Needs to Shake Up State Machinery says UNDP (1)

BANGKOK, Nov 15 (IPS) - Vietnam's bid to become one of Asia's growth engines is being hampered by the rickety state of its bureaucratic institutions.

According to the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), the country's communist bureaucracy lacks the capability to implement government policy, resulting in a 'serious lag' between policy reforms proposed by Hanoi, and subsequent implementation by state institutions.

Thus, Vietnam needs urgent help to build up the capacity of its institutions, says the UNDP in a report for the second pledging session of international aid donors in Paris Tuesday.

Vietnam is hoping to get 10 billion dollars into the next century to fund a new round of reforms to further broaden the market economy and re-orient the institutions of central planning.

The country's large and ineffective civil service has been the cause of frustration and complaints by aid donors and foreign investors for various sins ranging from corruption, red tape and incompetence.

Hanoi largely agrees with these criticisms. Indeed, a government report last year found serious deficiencies in the state machinery, described as "too large and overstaffed".

The government report added that the bureaucracy lacks a clear delineation between the central executive, legislative and judicial functions of government. In addition, it said, there is little coordination and a lack of basic discipline within the civil service.

Reform of the state sector has been a top priority in the last few years. The number of ministries has been reduced to 24 from about 40, some 100,000 jobs have been cut and state enterprises halved from about 6,000.

But the process has been slow, far from complete and hindered by powerful bureaucrats, says the UNDP, which has its regional headquarters in Bangkok.

Although the government has made pivotal changes in the management of the economy, "reinventing the government has only just begun in Vietnam", according to its report entitled 'Vietnam: Technical Assistance in Transition".

Vietnam still has a set of institutions that function on essentially the same principles as existed before the reforms or 'doi moi' were undertaken. The pattern so far has been to initiate policy reform before making the changes in public bodies required to implement the policy, the report's writers say.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service