Information-poor environments: Asian tigers - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 242

agencies and research institutes upon request, but not for other inter-
ested parties. There is no available information on industrial emissions
other than these (incomplete) collected and monopolized data of the
government. HEPA is also unable to press the other 60 major industrial
polluters to send their emission data, as there is no strong legal basis
under this information collection. 6 In addition, any pressure on indus-
tries to provide data has to go via the Environmental Management
Agency of DONRE, who is more powerful as this agency has to issue
environmental licenses. But also this agency has limited possibilities to
push industries to release emission data, as it would soon lead to inter-
ventions from the People's Committee of HCMC to reduce pressure in
order to enable economic development. Obviously, lines are very short
between the major industrial polluters and the People's Committee in
HCMC. The situation is in principle not different in HaNoi (Pham
Minh Hai, 2005 )
One of the consequences from this lack of (availability of) emission
data is the poor rate on environmental fee collection. At the moment
HCMC only knows a waste water fee, based on the water pollution
load. 7 The fee is established based on information provided by the
company, following the return of a filled-in form to HEPA (especially
to its Division of Administration, Finance and Environmental Fee Col-
lection). In principle, HEPA checks the data provided by the company
by comparing these data with general information on emission factors

6

The 1994 Law on Environmental Protection provides the overall framework for
environmental policy and management in Vietnam and has been detailed since
then with a significant number of decrees. But still it does not provide a
sufficient legal basis for setting up an adequate, extensive and detailed system of
environmental monitoring and information gathering. There is an obligation for
major companies (both private and state-owned; both domestic and foreign
ones) to send annually an environmental report to HEPA, but few do so and
there is no strong follow-up on noncompliance. O'Rourke ( 2004 ) noticed the
same for industries in HaNoi.

7

Of this fee, 15 percent goes to sampling activities, 5 percent of the fee goes to
the administration agencies (of that 1 percent to HEPA and 4 percent to the
district Environmental Boards) and 80 percent of the fee goes to an
environmental fund. Of this 80 percent, half goes to the national environmental
fund and half to the local environmental fund. Unofficially, DONRE of HCMC
has recently (2005) agreed with MONRE that HCMC can use all of the
80 percent, without any part flowing back to the national level. However, in
HCMC, these contributions for the local environmental fund were in 2005
mainly used to pay back loans for environmental infrastructure to the ADB,
leaving no money for other industrial environmental improvements.