HANOI, March 7 ------ Vietnam plans to merge provinces and eliminate district-level authorities, the government said, as a streamlining drive aiming to slash billions of dollars from state budgets gathers pace. The cost-cutting measures have already seen the number of government ministries and agencies slashed from 30 to 22, and one in five public-sector jobs will be cut over the next five years.
On Thursday, a statement on the government's website quoted Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh as saying a "key and urgent task" was to complete the rearrangement of "administrative boundaries... merging some provinces... and cutting off the district level." State media said the merging of provinces was scheduled for this year, aiming at "streamlining the apparatus and improving the quality, efficiency and effective distribution of resources." Communist-ruled Vietnam, a one-party state, is currently divided into 63 major cities and provinces, under which there are around 700 administrative units at the district level and more than 10,000 at the communal level.
Almost 2 million people worked in the public sector as of 2022, according to the government, which announced this year that 100,000 people would be made redundant or offered early retirement as part of the bureaucratic reforms. It is unclear if there would be further job cuts as part of the provincial mergers, or which provinces would be affected.
Vietnam's top leader To Lam, who last year became Communist Party general secretary following the death of his predecessor, has said state agencies should not be "safe havens for weak officials." "If we want to have a healthy body, sometimes we must take bitter medicine and endure pain to remove tumors," Lam said in December. But there are fears the bureaucratic reforms could cause short-term chaos, with reports surfacing of log-jams in provincial offices as administrative procedures slow. Vietnam's foreign ministry has denied any impact on the investment and business environment.
Source: manilatimes.net
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