VietNamNet Bridge – State-owned enterprises (SOEs) may be asked to publish financial information on their websites or other means of communication, according to a draft Circular.

Specifically, SOEs will have to make public their annual financial reports within ten days since independent auditors sign the audited reports.

The annual financial reports must be published within 90 days since the end of a financial year.

All the SOEs have to set up their own websites within six months after the Circular takes effect, the Ministry of Finance said, adding that financial information must be available on the websites.

The draft document, posted on the website of the Finance Ministry for public comments, is a step forward to the realization of the Government’s Decree 61/2013/ND-CP dated on June 25, 2013.

The Decree covers regulations on financial supervision, performance assessment and information publicity on enterprises wholly or partially owned by the State.

Under the Decree, enterprises will be supervised if they are discovered to have problems at a time when the yearly financial report is being made or auditing activities and financial supervision are underway. The problems include:

- Enterprises meet with losses and their debt/equity ratio exceeds the regulated safe point.

- Enterprises have incurred losses that account for 30 per cent of equity or accumulated losses are higher than 50 per cent of equity.

- Enterprises have the ratio of due debt lower than 0.5.

- Enterprises are discovered to make up financial report, providing wrong figures about business results.

These enterprises are requested to make plans to restructure their organization and business and financial activities to submit to their owners within 20 days from the issuance of the decision on special financial supervision status.

Those enterprises can get out of the list if their problems are solved in two consecutive years.

In contrast, those continuing with losses in two consecutive years will have to change their ownership or be dismissed and go bankrupt as regulated.

Source: VGP