A mouse click away from being registered

New decree allows businesses to apply for business registration certificates online instead of waiting in lines (the photo is taken at the Hồ Chí Minh City Department of Planning and Investment - Photo: Tuổi Trẻ)

Online business registration

Investors soon can apply for business licenses through the internet instead of waiting in lines at business registration centers.

The centers will receive applications online, review them then assist investors if necessary in completing all requirements. The centers will also make e-announcement of the results to investors.

In case, investors do not have any electronic signature, business registration procedures will still be processed and the investors can acquire e-certificates as proving that their documents have been sent to the registration centers.

One code for both taxation and business registration

The draft decree stipulates that each enterprise will be provided a business code which will expire once the operation is terminated by the enterprise. This code will not be re-used.

The code is used for the declaration and payment of all tax types, applied for enterprises that operate in many fields and different locations.

Nationally unified charges

Currently, the People’s Councils of different provinces apply different levels of registration fee for business. With the new decree, the same fee will be applied nationwide.

The registration fee will not be refunded even when the investors fail to acquire business registration certificates.

For coincident names of businesses

The new decree does not force enterprises having the same name registered in line with Decree 88/2006/NĐ-CP to rename.

The MPI will list the coincident and confusingly similar names of all enterprises online and encourage them to negotiate for changing these names .

One application, one-stop shop

The business registration centers, under the provincial Departments of Planning and Investment, are the sole destination for receiving applications and returning results.

In five centrally-governed cities namely Hà Nội, Hồ Chí Minh City, Hải Phòng, Đà Nẵng, Cần Thơ, the People’s Committees are allowed to convert their business registration centers into profit-making organizations.