Slow progress on reforming SOEs
HA NOI (VNS)— Restructuring of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) was showing slow progress, Ministry of Finance officials told press.
By the end of last month, about 30 restructuring projects filed by SOEs had been approved by authorities, according to Nguyen Duy Long from the ministry's Department for Enterprise Reorganisation and Development.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who has said reorganising SOEs was one of the pillars for restructuring the economy, asked projects of State-run economic groups and corporations under several ministries to be presented to the Government for consideration within the third quarter.
He said these ministries included the ministries of Construction, Transport, Finance, Agriculture and Rural Development, Industry and Trade, and Information and Communications.
According to Long, most of the approved schemes belonged to companies managed by the Transport and Agriculture and Rural Development ministries.
PetroVietnam, Vinacomin, the Viet Nam Rubber Group and the Electricity of Viet Nam had already submitted their plans to the Government, while many other firms were still developing their plans.
Dang Quyet Tien, deputy director of the ministry's Corporate Finance Department, told Dau tu Chung khoan (Securities Investment) that sluggish progress in this area was due to the lack of drastic measures from ministries as well as provincial authorities, in addition to the impacts of economic difficulties.
Long said while legal frameworks for SOE restructuring, especially regulations on equitisation and State capital investment and trading, were being promptly completed, business leaders and governing bodies needed to take decisive responsibilities for the restructuring process.
He urged units which hadn't achieved substantial progress to draw experience and be responsible to the Government.
Dung, who approved the nation's SOEs restructuring project in July, required State-run firms to revise their core lines of business and file plans for reorganising production and management methods, rationalising financial resources, boosting co-operation and renewing technologies until 2015.
Bui Tat Thang, head of the Ministry of Planning and Investment's Development Strategy Institute, said the general economic restructuring process needed more breakthroughs such as recent Government moves to terminate the pilot business model for the Viet Nam Construction Industry and Viet Nam Urban and Housing Development companies.
Such breakthroughs would support other pillars for overall restructuring, including public investment and banking-finance system reorganisation, he said. — VNS