On 09 September 2021, the Government has issued Resolution No.105/NQ-CP on supporting businesses, cooperatives, and business households in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic (“Resolution 105”). The content of Resolution 105 has many new points, enabling enterprises to take the initiative in resuming operations, maintaining and developing business. Accordingly, the Prime Minister requested Ministries, ministerial-level agencies, agencies attached to the Government, the People’s Committees of the provinces, municipalities and the relative authorities to issue specific guiding documents for the following contents:

1. HEALTH CARE:
1.1      Employees in enterprises include: (i) enterprises in key economic zones, economic zones, high-tech zones, industrial zones, industrial clusters, agriculture, and aquaculture production-processing-business areas; (ii) enterprises in the supply chain have production orders, import and export activities, and using a lot of employees; (iii) enterprises operating in the field of goods circulation seaports; (iv) employees working at national and local vital projects; (v) employees in high-risk sectors are added to the priority group for vaccination;

1.2       Prepare regulations to allow health insurance to pay for telemedicine activities with fee (completing in September);

1.3       Issue documents guiding enterprises to be able to purchase biological products, testing equipment, conduct self-testing, and recognize test results (completing in September). Localities balance budget to support part or all of testing costs of enterprises in the area through testing facilities;

1.4        Research on mechanisms to facilitate and encourage enterprises to import vaccines;

1.5        Specific instructions on testing and necessary conditions for employees to soon participate in circulation, production and business.

1.6       Guide the process of safe medical quarantine for localities to implement uniformly, facilitating the receipt of employees coming to or turning back from other localities. (completing in September).

1.7     Localities actively decide and take responsibility for allowing enterprises to operate when meeting safety conditions for pandemic prevention (meeting requirements when applying the model such as “One road, two destinations”, “Three on the spot”, “Three together”, etc.) on the principles: Minimize the closure of whole factories, enterprises but must be safe to prevent pandemic.

2.  TRAFFIC – CUSTOMS:
2.1        Unifying the “green flow” of road and water transport nationwide, inter-provincially and inter-regionally for safe transportation of goods (do not stipulate additional conditions and permits obstructing the circulation of goods, supplies, production materials, etc., which increases the costs of enterprises).

2.2        Regarding customs clearance of imported goods: Allow enterprises to submit scanned copies with digital signature certification for documents that must be submitted as originals in the form of paper/ notarized/ certified true copies according to regulations. After that, the enterprises would make additional submissions for post-inspection.

3.  FINANCE – BANK:
3.1        Supporting to reduce electricity bills, reduce electricity prices (the 5^th time) according to Resolution No. 97/NQ-CP dated 28 August 2021.

3.2        Instantly implementing the policies on extension and reduction of taxes, fees, charges and land rent expense.

3.3        Supplementing the policies on the structure of the payment period, interest exemption, or reduction of fees and keep the debt group for customers affected by COVID-19 pandemic (completing in September); The State Bank of Vietnam encourages credit institutions to reduce costs to continue reducing the interest rates of existing loans and new loans to support production and business.

3.4        The policies for the endemic business:

• • • (a)   Domestic car manufacturing and assembling enterprises: Extending of time limit for payment of the special consumption tax of domestically manufactured and assembled cars.

• • • (b)   Travel service enterprises: Early be reduced 80% of deposit for travel service business until the end of 2023; Reducing the processing time for refunding the travel service business deposit from 60 days to 30 days.
    • (c)   Import-export activities enterprises: To consider reducing the fees for using infrastructure works, services, and public utilities in the border gate area, type 1 and IA seaports; Delay the start time of charging fees at border gates and seaports.

4.  LABOR – SOCIAL INSURANCE:
4.1        Promulgating the related policies to support employees and enterprises (through reduction of contributions or support from short-term social insurance funds); Meanwhile, proposing the exemption of fines for late payment of social insurance arising in 2020-2021 (completing in September);

4.2        Considering the exemption of trade union dues for union members at enterprises affected by COVID-19, enterprises are entitled to reduce their union dues in 2021 and 2022;

4.3        Widening some regulations and conditions of the issuance, extension, and confirmation of work permits for foreign employees working in Vietnam.

4.4        Amending to increase the overtime hours/month in line with the COVID-19 pandemic, provided that the total overtime hours do not exceed 300 hours/year.

5.  THE OTHER REGULATIONS:
5.1        Pending, extending, delaying of unnecessary business inspections planned in 2021; Strictly handle cases of officers causing difficulties and harassment to enterprises;

5.2        Applying post-inspection to licensing procedures in the environmental field, issue the permits based on dossiers and opinions of specialized authority, and then the competent authority will organize post-inspection.