Ensuring people's rights in parallel with business development is the goal of amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree 15/2018/ND-CP detailing the implementation of the Law on Food Safety.
Ensuring people's rights in parallel with business development is the goal of amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree 15/2018/ND-CP detailing the implementation of the Law on Food Safety.
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| Workshop to collect business opinions on the Draft Decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree 15/2018/ND-CP |
Focus on administrative procedure reform
Consulting businesses to complete the Draft Decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree 15/2018/ND-CP (Decree 15) detailing the implementation of the Law on Food Safety is the content of a workshop recently organized by the Vietnam Federation of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) in coordination with the Department of Food Safety (Ministry of Health).
Taking place continuously from 8:30 to 12:30 (no break), the Workshop still did not have enough time for businesses to express their opinions.
“This is a topic of great interest to the business community, with some people flying from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi to attend,” Mr. Dau Anh Tuan, Deputy General Secretary and Head of the Legal Department of VCCI, emphasized in his opening speech.
Mr. Tuan also added that Decree 15 is a breakthrough decree in reforming specialized food safety inspections, bringing many benefits to both state management agencies and businesses. "At that time, businesses considered Decree 15 as a New Year gift from the Government," Mr. Tuan said.
However, according to the representative of the Food Safety Department, there are still urgent contents that need to be revised and supplemented.
The draft Decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree 15 focuses on three main groups of contents: administrative procedure reform, management decentralization and strengthening post-inspection to improve food quality.
Accordingly, the group of administrative procedure reform contents includes 10 contents: removing the regulation on notarized translation of English legal documents if they have been consularly legalized; accepting electronic copies of legal documents; allowing the use of test results of GMP-standard production facilities; limiting the number of times and time limit for supplementing product declaration dossiers; simplifying procedures for importing charitable aid foods; removing some documents in the dossier for registering advertising health protection foods; abolishing the requirement for GMP certificates for domestically produced health protection foods; building unified management software from central to local levels.
The content on strengthening decentralization and delegation of authority is decentralization of granting free circulation certificates for exported foods.
The group of post-inspection enhancements includes 4 contents: strictly control organizations and individuals announcing products; add product formula explanation to control quality; require re-announcement when changing important elements of the product; strengthen product quality control after announcement.
The group of solutions to implement the Government Inspector's recommendations includes requiring efficacy testing reports for functional foods introduced to the market for the first time and amending regulations on scientific evidence in the declaration dossier.
In addition, there are other contents such as clearer definitions of dietary supplements and health protection foods; stricter regulations on product self-declaration procedures, and amendments to regulations on management of alcohol product groups.
Regarding the procedure for self-declaration of food products, according to the Drafting Committee, the Draft Decree still maintains the provisions of Decree 15, organizations and individuals are entitled to produce and trade products immediately after self-declaration. However, it clearly stipulates the responsibility of the competent state management agency designated by the provincial People's Committee to post the self-declaration dossier on the unit's electronic information page within 7 days from the date of receiving the dossier, and must review the dossier within 3 months after the organization or individual makes the self-declaration (regarding product classification, uses, users, ingredients) to ensure that the product is declared correctly in nature and in accordance with regulations.
The leader of the Food Safety Department explained that the proposed content is consistent with management practices. Decree 15 does not yet have regulations for management agencies to control records self-declared by enterprises, leading to many enterprises self-declaring products, grouping products that do not match the nature of the product, and self-advertising and exaggerating the product's uses. For example, enterprises self-declared food supplements, while the nature of the ingredients is health protection food.
Find the optimal balance point
Acknowledging many positive points in this revision, in written comments as well as direct statements, business associations and entrepreneurs still have many concerns about the administrative burden that may arise, as well as the risks that businesses may encounter.
Based on the first Draft (February 2025), the concern of entrepreneurs lies in the number of applications increasing many times due to re-registration procedures.
Lawyer Tran Ngoc Han (AmCham Vietnam) stated that the Draft Decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree 15 requires all self-declared/registered products to be re-registered (within 2 years). Thus, 460,666 products must be re-declared and 69,426 products must be re-registered, which is a huge number of documents, creating a burden on both management agencies and businesses.
- Lawyer Nguyen Tuan Linh, Nutrition Food Subcommittee (EuroCham)
To avoid having to amend the decree twice in a row in one year, businesses cannot respond in a short time, it is proposed to amend the Food Safety Law first, then amend the implementing decree.
Lawyer Tran Ngoc Han's proposal is not to require products in circulation to self-declare/re-register.
According to this lawyer, Decree 15 has 3 cases that require re-announcement, while the Draft Revised Decree has 6 cases that require re-announcement. Thus, the number of records that must be self-announced will double compared to the present.
Or, regarding the registration of the announcement, Decree 15 stipulates 3 cases that must be re-registered, while according to the Draft Revised Decree, there are 15 cases that must be re-registered, meaning the number of files that must be re-registered will increase 5 times compared to the present.
Ms. Han proposed to keep it as stipulated in Decree 15, there needs to be a classification of major and minor changes and only major and important changes need to be re-announced and re-registered.
The presentation of lawyer Nguyen Tuan Linh (Nutrition Food Subcommittee, EuroCham) stated that the increase in self-declaration procedures could cost more than 7,230 billion VND/year and more due to stagnant production and business.
Mr. Linh analyzed that with Decree 15, enterprises are allowed to produce and do business immediately after submitting the application. According to the Draft Decree Amendment, within 7 days, the management agency will post it on the website, and within 3 months after posting, the application will be reviewed. Although enterprises are allowed to produce and do business immediately after submitting, if the review finds that the application is not in accordance with regulations, it will be revoked, regardless of whether the error is large or small (or not, but the reviewer finds it to be incorrect), without a mechanism to allow enterprises to explain or supplement. Therefore, most enterprises will wait for 3 months and 7 days, and if the management agency has no comments, then they dare to produce and do business.
This lawyer cited the results of a study conducted in 2024 by the Central Institute for Economic Management (now the Institute for Policy and Strategy Research, Central Policy and Strategy Committee), the self-declaration procedure of Decree 15 "helps each enterprise save 602.5 million VND/year", if multiplied by 12,000 enterprises, the figure will be 7,230 billion VND/year.
Most of the concerns of businesses were answered by Mr. Chu Quoc Thinh, Deputy Director of the Department of Food Safety at the workshop, showing that some concerns are legitimate, while others are due to a lack of understanding of the regulations in the Draft.
"The draft still maintains the licensing mechanism as Decree 15, there is no content changing the licensing mechanism," Mr. Thinh affirmed.
Regarding the self-declaration procedure requiring explanation, Mr. Thinh explained that it only applies to health protection foods, not rice, tea, coffee... (as some opinions gave as examples).
The Deputy Director of the Food Safety Department has emphasized more than once that the Drafting Committee's wish is for businesses to develop, but the interests of the people are paramount. "The Ministry of Health will pioneer in building software to handle all public services online, and publicize the entire process of document appraisal," Mr. Thinh informed businesses.
After the introduction of the new points of the Draft and Mr. Thinh's explanation, some delegates said that the second Draft (March 2) had absorbed many of their opinions.
Mr. Dau Anh Tuan emphasized that finding the optimal balance between management requirements and business development is the biggest challenge when amending Decree 15. According to Mr. Tuan, the development and promulgation of the Decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree 15 is allowed to apply simplified procedures, so consulting businesses is not a mandatory procedure. However, the Food Safety Department strongly supports this consultation, with up to 3 deputy directors attending, listening and responding to businesses' opinions, showing the high receptiveness of the Drafting Committee.
Source: https://baodautu.vn/tim-diem-can-bang-toi-uu-trong-quan-ly-an-toan-thuc-pham-d251276.html
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