Agricultural businesses need to remove regulations that cause unnecessary cost increases.
Agricultural enterprises also need to remove regulations that increase unnecessary costs. The regulation on animal feed and veterinary drugs alone has significantly increased production costs and greatly reduced the competitiveness of goods and services produced. At a recent working session of the Central Strategy Policy Committee and ministries and economic growth experts, General Secretary To Lam requested that at least 30% of business conditions be removed and input costs for enterprises reduced.
Before releasing a product of animal feed or veterinary medicine, this enterprise had to complete the procedures to declare the quality and safety indicators in the registration file and product packaging label. This regulation has sufficient legal basis for the manufacturer to be responsible before the law. However, over the past 5 years, this facility has still had to do an additional step of declaring the certificate of conformity. Also because of this conformity mark, in addition to the cost of evaluating the production process and taking samples for testing, the enterprise also has to pay for packaging designed specifically for the Vietnamese market.
Mr. Bach Quoc Thang – Vietnam Green Veterinary Company shared: “This only exists in Vietnam, not in all countries in the world. For example, veterinary medicine has GMO conditions and if we have achieved that, then the procedure for declaring conformity is not necessary, in my opinion.”
To obtain a certificate of conformity, the cost is from 3-5 million VND/product. For a business with a scale of 150-200 products, the cost will be around 1 billion VND. However, this paper does not increase the ability to manage the quality of goods but only wastes time as well as the cost of storing and receiving documents.
Representatives of agricultural industry associations all said that the regulation on conformity declaration is completely repeating the product registration procedure. It has inadvertently created an additional sub-license for people and businesses, and this also creates pressure for authorities when implementing.
Dr. Nguyen Thi Huong – President of the Vietnam Veterinary Association commented: “Testing is overloaded, issuing and registering certificate numbers is also overloaded, creating a huge amount of work.”
Dr. Nguyen Xuan Duong – Chairman of the Vietnam Livestock Association commented: “It makes our cost too high compared to the world, like pigs, abroad the price is 35,000 – 40,000 VND is profitable, in Vietnam 60,000 VND is still a loss because of too many invisible costs”.
More than 50,000 agricultural enterprises are becoming the core of the agricultural value chain. Many preferential policies for enterprises in the agricultural sector have been issued, but what needs to be done right now is to promptly adjust regulations that waste resources and abolish unreasonable regulations that have lasted for many years, such as regulations on conformity declaration.