and deputy director of VNPT’s cell phone network. Also under the spotlight is the decision to renegotiate the profit-sharing arrangements in a contract with VNPT’s mobile phone partner, Sweden’s Comvik International Vietnam. According to local media reports, the new arrangement may have deprived the government of around US $45 million in revenue. The telecommunications minister was chairman of VNPT’s board when the contract with Comvik was agreed, and may suffer the same fate as Le Huy Ngo should he be implicated in wrongdoing. Prime Minister Khai set up an interministerial group to investigate the matter further, but by the time of writing the group had not reported its findings.
Administrative reforms curtail opportunities for graft Much of the focus of the crackdown on corruption has been on punishing prominent offenders, but efforts are also being made to reduce the opportunities for more junior officials to abuse their positions in order to boost their income. The government is near the middle of the 2001–10 Public Administration Reform Master Programme, which aims to improve the delivery of administrative services at provincial, district and commune levels. The most notable initiative in terms of limiting the opportunities for graft is the expansion of the ‘One-Stop Shop’ (OSS) network. OSSs are central to the government’s efforts to improve service delivery through the creation of single agencies that deal with applications for a range of activities, including construction permits, land-use rights certificates, business registrations, and approvals for local and foreign investment projects.5 In September 2003 the government announced that it intended OSSs to be established at provincial and district levels in all of Vietnam’s 64 cities and provinces by the end of 2004, and to be developed at the
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commune level from January 2005. Despite teething problems, the expansion of the OSS network reflects a genuine attempt to improve the state’s administrative capabilities. The transparency of administrative procedures has also improved since OSS publish details of their services and fees, thereby limiting the opportunities for officials to demand additional payments. There are concerns, however, that the pace of legal reform has not kept up with administrative reforms. Recent amendments to the Law on Citizens’ Complaints and Denunciations focused on increasing the roles and responsibilities of officials in the administrative courts overseeing cases, but did not expand the review and enforcement powers given to the courts. As it stands, courts are only permitted to consider decisions that violate or exceed legal regulations, but they lack the jurisdiction to consider administrative bias or enforce decisions against recalcitrant officials. Local and foreign investors are also still discouraged by the burdensome red tape and the overlapping of government approvals that provide officials with opportunities to line their own pockets. The results of a survey of business sentiment were revealed at the Vietnam Business Forum in December 2003. Of the 143 foreign and local firms that responded, 54 per cent complained that bureaucracy and corruption were their biggest hindrances.6 Similar findings emerged from a 2004 survey by Hong Kong’s Political and Economic Risk Consultancy of expatriate businessmen and women, and their perceptions of corruption in 12 Asian countries. Vietnam was ranked behind Indonesia and India (Bangladesh was not included) as the third most corrupt nation in the region, with a score of 8.67 (on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 reflecting the worst case).7 Further initiatives aimed at improving investor confidence and tackling corruption are in the pipeline. Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has stated his commitment to implementing a range of measures including: developing a legal framework
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