Hanoi (VNA) – TheGovernment will waive business licence fees for a number of companies toimprove the business climate and promote entrepreneurship.

The exemption will benefit newly-established organisations, households,individuals or groups doing business for the first time.

Decree No 22/2020/ND-CP, which took effect from the end of February, amends therules to help new businesses get started.

Small and medium–sized enterprises (SMEs) which had been transformed frombusiness households would also enjoy the relief, according to the decree.

SMEs founded from business households would be exempted from business licensefee in three years since their foundation. However, the law did notinclude exemption for their branches and representative offices.

The Decree allows the exemption of license tax for their branches andrepresentative offices, aiming to encourage new business and transformation ofbusiness households into firms.

The exemption is also provided to agricultural cooperatives which werestruggling to promote their development.

According to the Ministry of Finance, this would significantly help reducecosts for starting a business in Vietnam and improve the country’s ranking ofthis indicator set in the World Bank’s Doing Business report.

Vietnam ranked 104th out of 190 economies starting a business in the WorldBank’s Doing Business 2019 report with eight procedures conducted in 17 days.The total cost for starting a business in the country was 3.05 million VND (131USD).

The new decree also extended the deadline for paying license fee to January 30of the second year of foundation, instead of the final day of the month in whichthey started operation.

The exemption of businesslicense fee might cause a drop of estimated 200 billion VND per year to theState budget but would help boost the number of new firms, according to thefinance ministry./.