Plan to drop licencing for billboards applauded
Under the draft law, the owners of billboards do not have to get licences for installing billboards, they only have to meet some requirements in terms of position, space, size, contents. Moreover, billboard installation must follow related laws and fit local advertisement programming. There are some 7,000 businesses that provide advertising services which had the total turnover of over $500 million in 2007.
Chairman and Secretary General of the Vietnam Advertisement Association Ha Van Tang said that the association has applauded the plan to remove the licencing for billboard installation. “The removal will help create a level footing with newspapers, as we do not have to get a licence to place advertisement pieces in newspapers,” Tang said.
Moreover Tang said that the removal of the licencing scheme would help ease complicated procedures. A recent survey conducted by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry showed that licencing proves to be a mechanism that ‘gives birth’ to wrongdoings. He added that many countries in the world have removed the mechanism on licencing billboard installation.
In Singapore, for example, there exists a council which gathers representatives of government agencies, advertisement associations and owners of advertisement vehicles. The council checks all claims about violations. Meanwhile, the deputy head of the bill’s compilation committee said that if the licencing scheme was removed, it would be necessary to do the programming well. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has released two documents related to advertisement programming. However, the programming pace in many localities has been going very slowly.
