Vietnam is rolling out a plan to streamline the government apparatus with the number of subordinates reduced by nine, including five ministries and four governmental agencies.

The government will cut its organization structure from the current 30 entities to 21, including 13 ministries, four ministerial agencies, and four governmental agencies, said Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra.

Minister Tra said the Ministry of Planning and Investment and the Ministry of Finance will be merged, potentially becoming the Ministry of Finance and Development Investment or the Ministry of Economics and Development.

Another merger will involve the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Construction to form the Ministry of Infrastructure and Urban Development.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will combine to create the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Environment. The combination will remove their overlap in tasks related to water resources and biodiversity.

The Ministry of Information and Communications will join the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs will be merged with the Ministry of Home Affairs, with vocational training functions to be transferred to the Ministry of Education and Training and social welfare, children protection, and social evil elimination functions to the Ministry of Health.

The Ministry of Health will take charge of several missions of the Central Committee on Health Care for Senior Governmental Officials.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will take over the main tasks of the Party Central Committee’s Commission for External Relations and the National Assembly's Committee for External Relations once these two units cease operations. 

The Ministry of Home Affairs’ Government Committee for Religious Affairs will become part of the Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs. The latter will also assume the poverty elimination tasks of the Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs.

With this plan, the number of units under the government, ministries, ministerial organizations, and other agencies under the government will be cut by 15-20 percent, Minister Tra said.

She stressed that it is necessary to develop effective policies to reduce the impact of the government apparatus restructuring on civil servants and public employees as well as to ensure their rights during the streamlining process.

The rearrangement will go hand in hand with reducing positions and improving the quality of personnel to meet initiatives slated for the future, Minister Tra explained.

Like us on Facebook or  follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!