Quang Ninh Leads PCI Rankings for 4th Consecutive Year

With a PCI score of 75.09 in 2020, Quang Ninh took the lead in the PCI rankings for 2020, marking the fourth consecutive year the northern province ranks first in the list.

Quang Ninh is also the only province out of a total of 63 provinces and cities nationwide that has scored the 75-point benchmark in the PCI reports since 2010.

The 2020 PCI report attributed the local efforts to back the business circle to overcome difficulties and challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to its successful performance in the ranking in 2020.

Since the beginning of 2020, the Quang Ninh provincial People's Committee asked for quick and flexible responses to improve businesses’ resilience focusing on clearly identifying affected sectors and fields such as tourism, agriculture and exports. The local authorities quickly took supportive measures to remove difficulties for investors and businesses, help them restructure repayments, access to loans, seek new export markets and partners, and develop trademarks.

This year, the PCI report collected feedbacks from about 12,300 firms, including 10,700 domestic private businesses operating in 63 provinces and municipalities, and nearly 1,600 foreign invested enterprises (FIEs) operating in 22 provinces in Viet Nam.

The 2020 PCI findings showed provincial economic governance has maintained its trend of improvement over time. The most notable improvements included a decline in informal charges, well maintained security and order, improved proactivity of provincial leadership, positive results in administrative reform, and a less skewed business landscape.

Since 2005, the PCI has been designed to assess the ease of doing business, the efficacy of economic governance and administrative reform efforts by provincial governments in Viet Nam in terms of private sector development. The survey comprises ten sub-indices namely entry costs, land access and tenure, transparency, time costs, informal charges, provincial leadership proactivity, policy bias, business support services, labor policy, and law and order.

By Huong Giang