Import 6-8 ministries, reduce dozens of provinces: Completely possible

The merger of ministries with similar tasks and functions and the merger of some administrative units with sufficient conditions to reduce 3-4 ministries and dozens of provinces is completely reasonable.

Speaking on the sidelines of the National Assembly this morning, Minister of Home Affairs Le Vinh Tan said that the Ministry will soon develop an action program to implement the contents set forth in the resolution of the 6th Central Committee meeting.

Resolution 18, 6th Central Committee "Some issues on continuing to innovate and reorganize the political system, streamline, operate effectively and efficiently" clearly states the need to consolidate, reorganize, and reduce focal points in the coming term, such as: Transport - construction sector; finance - investment planning; ethnic - religious sector...

The Resolution also encourages the merger and increase in the size of administrative units at all levels where conditions permit to improve management and operational capacity and strengthen local resources.

Immediately organize within ministries and localities

Minister of Home Affairs Le Vinh Tan. Photo: T. Hang

The Minister of Home Affairs said that there are contents that can be applied immediately, there are research areas that are oriented for piloting, and there are also contents that are prepared for the 13th Party Congress.

"What can be done immediately is to rearrange the organizational structure within ministries and localities," said Minister Tan.

According to him, the functions and tasks of agencies should be reviewed to avoid overlap, and ministries and branches, including affiliated units, should be rearranged to ensure that there is only one public service unit left in each provincial-level professional agency.

"Specialized agencies of sectors such as health must also be rearranged appropriately. Some tasks can be transferred from the central level to the provincial level, and from the provincial level to the district level to reduce the number of focal points," said Mr. Tan.

Responding to the plan and roadmap for merging a number of ministries, Minister Le Vinh Tan said that the Ministry of Home Affairs was assigned by the Prime Minister two action programs: Rearranging the apparatus of state administrative agencies and rearranging units according to Resolution 6 of the Central Committee.

"This also follows the content of the Central Resolution to develop a roadmap for implementation steps," said Mr. Tan.

Regarding the proposal to merge provinces with small populations, Minister Tan said that this issue must be summarized and re-evaluated, because each province's size is suitable for different conditions and characteristics of plains, mountains, islands or urban areas, so there must be a summary before it can be evaluated.

Minister Le Vinh Tan also said that Resolution 6 of the Central Committee only mentioned overlapping agencies with similar functions and tasks, so they should be reviewed. "Resolution 6 of the Central Committee does not mention the issue of merging provinces," said Mr. Tan.

Regarding the merger of ministries, according to Mr. Tan, this policy belongs to the third category of "continued research".

There is absolutely a basis for merger.

“I think the proposal to merge similar ministries and branches, and merge some provinces to reduce 3-4 ministries and dozens of provinces is completely reasonable. Through the time of supervising in the provinces with the National Assembly's supreme supervision delegation, I also realized this,” said Le Thanh Van, standing member of the National Assembly's Finance and Budget Committee.

Delegate Le Thanh Van. Photo: Pham Hai

The delegate from Ca Mau province said that in the 13th National Assembly, he proposed merging a number of ministries such as the Ministry of Planning and Investment with the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Transport with the Ministry of Construction, and now that proposal is still valid.

“The Ministry of Planning and Investment and the Ministry of Finance are both involved in the management of national resources. One builds plans to organize resources, the other implements those resources, but there is often a gap in policy. Merging them into one is called the Ministry of Planning and Finance or even absorbing some functions of other ministries and calling them the Ministry of General Economics,” Deputy Van analyzed.

He also proposed merging the Ministry of Transport with the Ministry of Construction to call it the Ministry of Infrastructure.

According to him, there are some very necessary ministries but they do not exist, such as the Ministry of Sea and Islands and the Ministry of Tourism, which are currently only at the general department level.

According to Delegate Le Thanh Van, it is necessary to review the management needs of society. What the State must manage should be divided and arranged into groups of fields. What the State does not necessarily manage should be returned to society.

“This is the spirit of Resolution 6 of the Central Committee mentioned, as also stated in the report of the monitoring delegation. How to manage the state by focusing only on the most important issues with the spirit of development creation. The state holds the right to control management in the most important aspects, from which it divides the fields into similar groups to determine appropriate organizational institutions,” said Deputy Le Thanh Van.

Head of the Central Organizing Committee Pham Minh Chinh said that the Committee will organize a workshop to discuss this in depth.

According to Vietnamnet.vn