On the morning of August 28, the National Assembly Standing Committee gave opinions on the draft Law on Development of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
Presenting the Government's report, Member of the Party Central Committee, Minister of Finance Ngo Van Tuan said that the Government proposes to upgrade and rename it to the Law on SME Development, replacing the Law on SME Support in 2017.
According to Minister Ngo Van Tuan, the renaming from "Law on Supporting SMEs" to "Law on Development of SMEs" shows a change in policy thinking, from supporting businesses to creating favorable conditions for business development.
The draft Law is designed to consist of 5 Chapters, 85 Articles with many new orientations in policy implementation organization.
One of the notable points is the shift from widespread support to focused, key support, according to the needs and growth process of the business. The principle of support is defined in a focused, timely and linked to output results direction.
The policy is also designed according to the roadmap for upgrading businesses, from household businesses transforming into businesses; from micro-enterprises to small enterprises; from small to medium-sized enterprises and from medium-sized enterprises developing into large enterprises.
Accordingly, the policy measure is shifted from the number of businesses supported to the level of business development after being supported.
The draft also supplements support methods in the direction of taking businesses as the center, allowing businesses to be more proactive in selecting content and support units, shifting from "The State supports what we have" to "supporting what businesses need".
The State budget according to this orientation is not only used for support spending but also plays a leading role, sharing risks and mobilizing more social resources for business development.
Regarding specific policies, the draft law designs 2 groups of policies:
- The general support policy group focuses on solutions to support unblocking bottlenecks that are hindering the operation and development of SMEs, especially in terms of access to capital, land, technology and markets.
- The policy support group focuses on innovative startups and SMEs transforming from household businesses.
According to Minister Ngo Van Tuan, in the context of high growth targets requiring the private economic sector to expand both in scale and quality, the groups of businesses prioritized for support are those businesses that have the ability to create clear transformation, have higher productivity and better linkages.
This will be the foundation for businesses to have conditions to break through innovation, mature and develop to larger scale" - the Minister emphasized.
Giving opinions for verification, Member of the Party Central Committee, Chairman of the Economic and Finance Committee Phan Van Mai said that he basically agreed on the necessity of adjusting the criteria for determining SMEs.
However, it is proposed to continue reviewing the regulations to ensure the principle of publicity and transparency, clearly defining the criteria and conditions for enjoying support policies, not generating additional administrative procedures, and avoiding the appraisal and "ask - give" mechanism.
The thẩm tra agency also noted that support policies are still general, support is fixed, regular, and basically not limited in time.
At the same time, it is proposed to supplement basic principles, ensuring timely support, objectives, resources and clear output results.
