Local firms need to pay due attention to their brand, including brand building, brand valuation and brand governance. — Photo baocongthuong.com.vn

HÀ NỘI — Local firms need to pay due attention to their brand, including brand building, brand valuation and brand governance, said an official.

Đặng Quyết Tiến, deputy head of the Ministry of Finance (MoF)’s Enterprise Finance Department made the statement at a conference held in Hà Nội yesterday.

“Internationally, brand is considered the core value of the business, with some brands’ value accounting for 70 per cent of the total value of business assets. But in Việt Nam, brand matters have not received the due consideration they deserve from local companies,” Tiến said.

In fact, some foreign organisations had recognised the value of several Vietnamese companies’ intangible assets, Tiến said, adding that Việt Nam had quite a lot of brands appearing in various prestigious rankings in the world.

As announced by Brand Finance, an UK-based brand consultation and valuation company, Vietinbank was recognised as one of the Top 100 Largest Banks in ASEAN and the only Vietnamese bank included in the 2016 list of top 400 most valuable banking brands in the world, with the brand value amounting to US$249 million, Tiến said.

Also according to Brand Finance, the Viettel brand last year was valued at US$2.6 billion. The Vinaphone brand was valued at $1.04 billion and Mobifone at $391 million.

“Some enterprises even had spent a large amount of money to build their own brands, but were confused when determining the value of the brands, which are intangible but precious assets for businesses,” Tiến said.

Vietnamese enterprises’ brands were facing many challenges such as the infringement of intellectual property (IP), Lê Ngọc Lâm, Deputy Director of the National Office of Intellectual Property of Việt Nam of the Ministry of Science and Technology said at the conference.

The Việt Nam National Tobacco Corporation (Vinataba), coffee producer Trung Nguyên Group, Phú Quốc fish sauce and Bến Tre coconut candy were particular examples of Vietnamese firms being victims of IP infringement when they were circulating their products in the global market, Lâm said.

Also having hired professional consultants in value branding, Tiến said, some State-owned enterprises when conducting equitisation processes had been provided with different values for their brands, causing big losses to the State budget.

Tiến added that there were also still some limitations and overlaps in the content of legal documents stipulating the brand valuation methods.

Samir Dixit, Managing Director of Brand Finance Asia Pacific said brand equity was an intangible asset because the value of the brand was not a physical asset and was instead determined by consumer perception.

When building and developing a brand, firms needed to focus strongly on Brand Strength indices (BSI) and Governance Strength indices (GSI), which were the two essential indicators measuring the efficiency of brand valuation, Dixit said.

The workshop was co-organised by the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. — VNS