VietNamNet Bridge - Some state-owned economic groups and general corporations have publicised their business performances, including managers’ incomes. 

 

The pay for the chair of the Vietnam Textile and Garment Group (Vinatex) was reported in social media in early July at VND640 million a year.

One month ago, the information about the annual salary of VND640 million of Vinacomin’s (Vietnam Coal and Mineral Industries Group) chair, appeared on news websites.

Prior to that, the loss of trillions of dong incurred by Petrolimex from its overseas investment was the hot topic of discussion in local newspapers.

The information was found on the official websites of the groups. Vinacomin updated its payroll on the website, while Petrolimex updated its audited financial reports.

However, Vinacomin and Petrolimex are just a few of the enterprises that publicised their business results. Meanwhile, under current laws, nearly 1,000 state-owned economic groups and general corporations have to follow the regulations on information disclosure.

The information portal about electricity and petroleum production and trade activities was set up one year ago. However, only some information about the Electricity of Vietnam and Petrolimex can be found there. Meanwhile, there is no news about the operation of 20 petroleum distributors and other electricity companies.

Speaking at a conference about public finance held by the Ministry of Finance on July 23, Aaron Batten, Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Vietnam, noted that Vietnamese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are especially weak at transparency.

He noted that the SOEs to be equitized in the time to come are large scale, are unclear about liabilities, and have weak corporate governance. These factors, plus the lack of transparency, discourage investors.

Also according to the expert, only 8 percent of SOEs in Vietnam publish information on their websites. In many cases, the finance reports updated on the websites are not transparent enough, which makes it impossible to measure the businesses’ performance after equitization.

International experts in recent conferences agreed that while Vietnam has made a big leap in renovating the legal framework, it remains weak at implementing laws, which discourages new investors and strategic investors who want to buy shares in SOEs.

Deputy Minister of Finance Truong Chi Trung said his ministry and the Ministry of Planning and Investment have joined forces to compile two draft government decrees on SOE monitoring and information disclosure.

The ministries proposed to impose heavy fines on SOEs which refuse to follow the obligation on information disclosure.

Trung said in the time to come, 100 percent state-owned enterprises will also have to  disclose information as public companies do.

SOEs’ pay to workers in the first quarter was VND6.9 million a month on average.

Pham Huyen