Top provinces and cities with "Good" governance quality honored

After 21 years of continuous launch, the 2025 PCI Rankings Report marks the biggest methodological upgrade to date, with the introduction of PCI 2.0 and the first-ever launch of the Business Performance Index (BPI). The report is based on a large-scale empirical survey involving 3,546 domestic private enterprises, 586 foreign-invested enterprises (FDI), and 1,001 business households across all 34 provinces and cities. This is one of the most comprehensive and in-depth surveys of Vietnam's private sector in many years.

The PCI 2.0 comprises 9 component indicators with 98 criteria. These indicators include market entry, access to resources, transparency, administrative compliance costs, informal costs, fair competition, business support policies, legal institutions, and proactive governance.

Speaking at the event, VCCI President Ho Sy Hung emphasized that Vietnam's private sector has overcome the defensive phase, is accumulating internal strength, and is ready to break through if bottlenecks in markets, capital, and policy transparency are decisively addressed in the next 12 to 18 months. PCI 2.0, along with BPI, will help to more deeply measure the quality of governance and the capacity for innovation of local governments in this new phase. At the same time, he affirmed that, in order to realize the goal of 2 million businesses by 2030, policies need to be shifted strongly from management to partnership, from reducing procedural burdens to creating competitive capacity for businesses.

In 2025, VCCI proactively shifted from publishing specific rankings to six groups of governance quality indicators due to different conditions among provinces and cities after administrative mergers and in line with international practices. The national median PCI score reached 63.90 out of 100, reflecting the continuous flow of reforms.

When first launched, the BPI comprised 23 indicators across two criteria: the development of the private sector and its innovation capacity. While the PCI measures institutional inputs, the BPI measures market outputs.

The results of the 2025 BPI pilot show three leading localities: Ho Chi Minh City (5.67 points), Hanoi (5.41 points), and Quang Ninh (5.33 points). The national median BPO score is 4.20 points. Notably, correlation analysis shows that the quality of governance (PCI) in 2022 has a statistically significant relationship with the BPI in 2025, confirming that policy impacts have a lag of approximately 3 years. This is an important basis for a long-term reform roadmap instead of expecting immediate results.

The report honored the five best-governing localities (listed alphabetically): Bac Ninh, Da Nang, Hai Phong, Phu Tho, and Quang Ninh. A common feature of the leading group is a balanced governance structure, with at least 5 out of 9 component indicators ranking in the top 10 nationwide.