Simplification of The Process and Procedures In Land Access And Development Permits In Vietnam
This administrative toolkit is jointly published by IFC, the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) and the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) in Vietnam. Its primary objective is to help provinces in Vietnam learn from exemplary administrative reform models and best practices relating to land access and development permits at a low cost and avoid errors in implementing their own administrative reforms. It is a collection of steps that can be taken by localities to analyze their own administrative performance and improve their performance by implementation of "best practice" ideas taken from international and Vietnamese experiences.
May 2011
| English 
5 MB | Vietnamese 
5 MB |
Prospects for Cambodia’s Cashew Sub-sector
Published jointly by IFC, the European Union, and Cambodia’s Ministry of Industry, Mines, and Energy. The study, Prospects for Cambodia’s Cashew Sub-sector, finds that there is great potential for increasing value added for the country’s cashew sector. It shows that Cambodia’s cashew industry could earn an additional $30 million to $40 million a year and benefit poorer farmers if more processing is done locally.
November 2010
| English 
3 MB |
General Environmental, Health and Safety Guidelines
IFC has been supporting the Vietnam Environment Administration under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in reviewing the country’s environmental standards and in developing a 5-year roadmap for improving or revising national environmental technical standards. The Vietnamese version of IFC General Environmental, Health and Safety Guidelines is an outcome of this cooperation and marks an important step forward in the long term partnership between the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and IFC. This Handbook provides timely international technical standards to help Vietnam integrate international best practices into its national environmental standards development and update.
November 2010
|Vietnamese 
4 MB |
Understanding Cambodian Small and Medium Enterprise Needs for Financial Services and Products
This study was conducted in early 2009 to review the SME sector in 11 provinces and 6 industry sectors (agriculture, retail, wholesale, hospitality, manufacturing, and services). The results of this study help financial institutions (FIs) better understand the needs and potential of serving SMEs so that FIs can make decisions about expanding services and products for this important pillar of the Cambodian economy.
November 2010
| English 
2.8 MB |
Vietnam Energy Efficiency and Cleaner Production Financing
The Vietnam Energy Efficiency and Cleaner Production (EECP) Financing Program aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve resource utilization by increasing available financing for cleaner production and energy efficiency investments. The project works with selected commercial banks to build market strategies and tailored financing products, and targets enterprises looking to upgrade their production systems and technologies to achieve greater energy efficiency, cost savings, productivity, and environmental performance.
|Vietnamese 
1MB | English 
186 KB |
Handbook on Food and Beverage Enterprise Inspection in Cambodia
This Handbook was prepared to assist food and beverage enterprises to comply with inspection procedures. It provides comprehensive steps and requirements and helpful hints for enterprises so that they are better able to comply with inspection procedures.
April 2010
Main report | Khmer 
688 KB | English 
1.7 MB |
Annex | Khmer 
4 MB | English 
2 MB |
The Provincial Business Environment Scorecard
This report provides a summary of key findings from the 2009 Provincial Business Environment Scorecard survey which was conducted with 1, 234 entrepreneurs in all 24 of Cambodia's provinces. The survey asked entrepreneurs for their opinions on 10 key indicators of business friendliness which include property rights, transparency of regulations, informal charges, and the effectiveness of public officials. Based on survey results, and additional quantitative data, the PBES gives provinces a grade on each indicator and ranks provinces on their overall score. 2009 PBES, like 2006 PBES, shows public officials where to target reform efforts in their province and gives business owners the information they need to advocate for reforms. The PBES also identifies provinces engaging in good practices so that officials in other provinces can learn from these examples, and it provides a baseline for measuring the results of reforms over time.
November 2009
Summary report | Khmer 
752 KB | English 
811 KB |
Full report | Khmer 
2.2 MB | English 
1.6 MB |
Handbook for Simplifying Administrative Procedures at the Provincial Level
This handbook was prepared to show the benefits of simplifying business start-up and licensing procedures, and to explain, step-by-step, how to do this. The handbook serves as a tool to assist other provincial governments to do the same by illustrating how Siem Reap approached its administrative reform process and the steps it took to streamline business entry procedures. Although this handbook focuses on business entry procedures, the process and steps outlined here can also be applied to reforming all types of administrative procedures.
November 2009
| Khmer 
1.4 MB | English 
1.6 MB |
Listing of Business Establishments in Cambodia’s Provincial Towns and Selected Urban Areas
The Listing of Business Establishments report provides basic profile of private sector collected on nearly 64,000 businesses across 24 provinces of Cambodia. The report contributes towards the development of knowledge about Cambodia’n private sector by providing key information about Cambodian businesses including their location; type of business; size; age of business; number of employees; gender of the owner; revenue; and target market (domestic or international). This listing of businesses covers all 24 provincial capitals, plus 10 additional economically active districts, and is the most comprehensive listing of Cambodia’n businesses to date.To gather this data, enumerators interviewed the owner or designated manager of every operating business within a three kilometer radius of the center of the provincial capital or selected district.
March 2009
Main Report English | Khmer
Appendix English | Khmer
Data by Province English | Khmer
Voices of Cambodian Women Entrepreneurs
This publication summarizes the findings of an exploratory study that asked women entrepreneurs about the challenges they face and how these problems could be resolved. In the course of this study, 101 businesswomen from four provinces – Kampong Cham, Kampot, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap – were interviewed. In total, 33 of these women provided in-depth interviews and 68 participated in one of eight discussion groups.
The women entrepreneurs covered in the publication own a cross section of businesses - from micro-enterprises in rural areas, to larger businesses in urban centers. The majority of women interviewed have only a secondary education, some even less, and a few are illiterate. Almost all the women interviewed are married and have children; the exceptions being a few widows and divorcees.
| 2008 | English 
2.49 MB | Khmer 
3 MB |
Handbook on Export Procedures
This handbook provides clear and concise information on government export procedures in a user-friendly format suited to SMEs with little export experience. These include the procedures at the five main export points in Cambodia, including Bavet, Poipet, Sihanoukville port, Phnom Penh port, and Pochentong International Airport. In addition to general procedures that apply to all exports, this handbook also explains the requirements for obtaining Certificates of Origin, export licenses, and other export certificates from various ministries.
| 2008 | English 
1.4 MB | Khmer 
1.3 MB |
Increasing Access to CreditThrough Collateral (Secured Transactions) Reform
This report analyzes Vietnam's secured transactions framework and the decade-long reform efforts within the context of global best practices. The report is organized in four chapters.
- The first chapter focuses on how secured transactions laws and registries increase access to credit.
- The second chapter summarizes the constraints of the lending environment in Vietnam.
- The third and fourth chapters provide an overview of Vietnam's legal and institutional framework for secured transactions and analyze recent reform efforts within the context of global best practices.
- Fifth chapter summarizes key policy recommendations for implementation.
The report is also supported by an annex that details international best practices for secured transactions laws and registries.
| 2007 | English 
1.24 MB | Vietnamese 
469 KB |
Simplification of Business Start-up Process and Procedures: a Handbook for Provinces
Simplification of Business Start-up Process and Procedures provides best practice references to provinces in establishing and operating a one stop shop (OSS) office to handle business start-up registration process and procedures in Vietnam, including information disclosure, form renovation, information technology application, customer service and monitoring and evaluation of models in practice.
The handbook also recommends a reference OSS model based on current legal framework and experiences from reforms of business start-up procedures in certain provinces in Vietnam as well as examples from other countries around the world.
The handbook is the result of a joint collaboration between the Mekong Private Sector Development Facility of the International Finance Corporation – the private sector arm of the World Bank Group and the Central Institute for Economic Mananagement – a reputed local research institute in Vietnam.
By IFC-MPDF and CIEM
| June 2007 | English (still in progress) | Vietnamese paperback 
1.2 MB |
The Provincial Business Environment Scorecard in Cambodia
Recent research on the development of the Cambodian private sector has highlighted four important and interconnected findings.
1) The private sector is the major source of employment in the economy (accounting for 92% of total jobs) and will continue to be the dominant source of job creation and poverty reduction for the foreseeable future.
2) Nevertheless, relative to its peers in other Southeast Asian economies, the Cambodian private sector has been inhibited in its ability to grow and create jobs because of a wide spectrum of institutional barriers and constraints to its development.
3) As a result of these institutional barriers, the vast majority of private enterprises have avoided the full formalization of their activities (as measured by whether an enterprise has registered with the Ministry of Commerce).
4) For all unregistered enterprises and most of the registered enterprises as well, the immediate interface with governing institutions is at the local (specifically the provincial/municipal) level.
And yet, researchers and those in the donor community understand very little about these interactions, how they affect private sector performance and the choice to formalize, and finally how provincial governance differs across Cambodia. The missing key to our understanding of how to promote the growth and dynamism of the private sector in Cambodia and thereby assist job creation and poverty alleviation lies in a thorough understanding of the impact of local institutions on private sector performance. This “Provincial Business Environment Scorecard” (PBES) is a first attempt to understand this in Cambodia.
The PBES is a thorough diagnosis of the comparative economic governance of 10 provinces according to 10 basic criteria (sub-indices: Entry Costs, Property Rights, Transparency and Access to information, Participation, Time Costs of Regulatory Compliance, Informal Charges, Crime Prevention, Tax, Proactivity of Provincial Leadership and Dispute Resolution). The ultimate goal of the project is to identify the provinces that have excelled at various aspects of provincial governance and communicate the successful practices to struggling provinces.
| Summary report English 
(797KB) | Summary report Khmer 
(716KB) |
| Technical report English 
3184KB | Technical report Khmer 
(5.5 MB) |
PBES Technical Report
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Sub-Indices of the PBES
Methodology
Next Steps
Appendix
Voices of Vietnamese Women Entrepreneurs
Women play a crucial part in reducing poverty and advancing human development. Through a variety of roles – family caregivers, agricultural producers and wage earners – women have a positive impact that not only sustains their households but also benefits their overall societies. In recent years, there has been greater awareness of yet another way through which women power economic growth – entrepreneurship.
Voices of Women Entrepreneurs in Vietnam highlights a number of conversations with successful businesswomen. Despite the difficulties confronting them, Vietnamese women entrepreneurs demonstrate an extraordinary ability to survive, adapt and prosper. Their discussions go beyond describing problems to reveal a number of creative and effective coping strategies and tactics. It is our hope that by amplifying their voices, this publication will not only help expand opportunities for existing businesswomen in Vietnam but also inspire future generations to follow their own visions for economic development.
| Full report English 
(1.25MB) | Full report Vietnamese 
(1.27MB) |
Informality and the Playing Field in Vietnam's Business Sector
This study explores the business environment in Vietnam from the perspective of supporting economic growth. It focuses on informality and the evenness of the playing field in Vietnam’s business sector. The study is based on findings from a survey of private and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in 11 Vietnamese cities. It reflects the views of Vietnamese entrepreneurs on the business environment and incorporates the feedback from discussions with policy makers, financiers, and representatives of international organizations.
The study provides evidence of the significant improvements that have taken place in the Vietnamese business environment. It also identifies areas where policy actions can help to create a more transparent, predictable legal and regulatory framework and even the playing field for the private domestic-owned companies, the stateowned enterprises, and the foreign-invested companies. We hope that this study will provide all those with an interest in the development of the Vietnamese economy with new insights into its status and new ideas for ways to support and participate in its future growth.
| 2003 | English 
(462kb) |
Cambodia and WTO: A Guide for Business
Ministry of Commerce has collaborated with the International Finance Corporation’s Mekong Private Sector Development Facility (MPDF) in preparing this Guide and in other initiatives to inform the private sector about WTO.
As you will see when you read this Guide, it is organized into two main sections. The first of these presents a detailed overview of WTO rules and policies. The second part examines the probable impact that WTO membership will have on a number of different sectors. This is a very important section because it gives a broad overview of the market for each sub-sector, the challenges that Cambodian businesses will face and also provides sources for further information on each market.
| March 2003 | Full report English 
(704kb) | Full report Khmer 
(851kb) |
