Since the beginning of 2020, the World has faced one of the biggest global crises in recent decades, which was the rapid spread of Covid-19 pandemic. Isolation measures, social distancing and different restrictions were strictly implemented setting out great challenges for businesses and showing a less prosperous picture of global economy. Businesses in the Southeast Asia have been suffering from many difficulties during over period. In fact, number of businesses could absolutely understand how Covid-19 pandemic affecting their business operations in the near future still remains a weakness.
At the virtual business integrity roundtable series – beyond the Covid 19 crisis hosted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on past March 31st, the event brought together representatives from many different sectors. On the Vietnamese side, Mr. Nguyen Quang Vinh, VCCI Secretary General attended the conference to share his insights into several identified risks that businesses encountered during the pandemic outbreak period.
On the business side, the pressure of ensuring business continuity, labor management as well as disrubtion to global supply chain, etc. were reasons causing significant impacts on business integrity. In order to overcome obstacles towards sustainable development in the long term, Mr Vinh highlighted that despite the size of businesses whether they were large or small, business integrity should be put at the heart of their operation because it would create a core foundation helping businesses to boost its resilience, attract loyal and new customers as well as the interest of genuine investors, recruit and retain talents in times of crisis.
Through this workshop, great efforts of promoting business integrity made by VCCI over the past 10 years were also shared, especially initiatives of Helping SMEs to resist corruption and “Government-Business Integrity Initiative-GBII. These projects were funded by the UK Prosperity Fund through UNDP regional project “Promoting a Fair Business Environment in ASEAN”.
On this occasion, OECD and UNDP would like to thank VCCI for recent goodwill cooperation, particularly the 10th Asia Pacific Anti-corruption Initiative Regional Conference’s Business Integrity Meeting as a good example and they also expressed their interest in closely working with VCCI in days coming for similar activities.
