Legal support: 'Push' for small and medium enterprises

(Chinhphu.vn) - Legal support is not only an urgent need but also a key factor in improving competitiveness, ensuring the legitimate rights and interests of the business community, especially small and medium enterprises.

The need for legal support of small and medium enterprises is increasing. Illustrative photo

Legal support is stipulated in the Law on Support for Small and Medium Enterprises 2017 to support the business community in improving their understanding, knowledge, and awareness of law compliance, thereby contributing to preventing and limiting legal risks and legal disputes when participating in production, business, and investment activities. At the same time, on June 24, 2019, the Government also issued Decree No. 55/2019/ND-CP on legal support for small and medium enterprises. This is considered an extremely meaningful and important support policy for businesses.

Accordingly, in order to synchronously, effectively and practically implement the Law on Support for Small and Medium Enterprises and Decree No. 55/2019/ND-CP, the Prime Minister issued Decision No. 81/QD-TTg approving the Inter-sectoral Legal Support Program for Small and Medium Enterprises for the period 2021-2025.

After 5 years of implementing Decree No. 55/2019/ND-CP, it can be seen that within the scope of management, ministries, central agencies and provincial-level local authorities have issued plans, directives and guidelines to implement legal support for businesses. Some localities have actively and proactively developed and implemented projects, topics, programs and plans to provide legal support for businesses; issued resolutions regulating local spending levels for legal support for businesses, regulations on coordination of legal support for businesses, etc.

However, besides many achievements, legal support for small and medium enterprises still has many shortcomings and limitations such as most ministries and branches have not announced the network of legal consultants; support costs are still low, procedures are cumbersome; most small and medium enterprises do not have a legal department to advise on the implementation of relevant legal regulations; the team of people providing legal support for enterprises is still thin, weak, and uneven in legal awareness, skills, and implementation methods...

Director of the Department of Legal Dissemination and Education, Ministry of Justice Le Ve Quoc said that currently, the country has about 900,000 enterprises, of which 97% are small and medium enterprises, striving to have at least 2 million enterprises by 2030. With this number, the need for support in general and the need for legal support in particular of small and medium enterprises will certainly increase.

Especially in the context of digital technology development and increasingly strong and deep international economic integration as today, the emergence of legal issues, legal incidents and problems in production, business and investment activities of enterprises is inevitable, and may even become more complicated, unpredictable and risky.

Meanwhile, the private sector, small and medium enterprises, have not yet met the requirements of competitiveness, legal knowledge, especially law enforcement is still limited. Therefore, it is necessary to have support from the State through programs and projects on legal support for small and medium enterprises, including legal consultancy activities of the network of legal consultants providing legal support...

Providing solutions on legal institutions, Deputy Minister of Justice Nguyen Thanh Ngoc said that it is necessary to continue to research, carefully review, and identify the limitations and shortcomings of Decree 55/2019/ND-CP and related legal documents, especially the limitations and shortcomings that have been pointed out, in order to promptly propose appropriate amendments and supplements to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of this work in the coming time.

The Ministry of Justice will focus on expanding the scope of legal support for businesses, not just small and medium enterprises. It is necessary to add beneficiaries such as business households to be consistent with the Party's guidelines, the State's policies and the needs of society; have a general mechanism for legal support for businesses and a priority mechanism, specific to each type of subject that needs to be prioritized according to the Party's Resolutions...

At the same time, clearly stipulate the coordination responsibilities of ministries, branches, localities, law practice organizations, the Vietnam Bar Federation, the Vietnam Federation of Commerce and Industry; and the social responsibility of lawyers when participating in the operation and development of the National Legal Portal to become a prestigious address trusted and chosen by people and businesses.

Bich Phuong

Source: https://baochinhphu.vn/ho-tro-phap-ly-luc-day-cho-doanh-nghiep-nho-va-vua-102250924161130258.htm