State enterprise reform in Vietnam: the undergoing process and proposals of improvement

Vietnam is undergoing a comprehensive renewal reform process in which the principal content is the successful transition from a Soviet styled centralized economy to a market economy under State management and socialist orientation. Among the ongoing reforms, State owned enterprises (SOEs) reform assumes a key position and is of vital role because of its importance as economic entities but also political meaning. The Resolution of the 7th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam states that “the public economic sector must be consolidated and developed in the essential and key sectors, assuming the activities that other economic actors cannot assume. It must be re-organized and have to support the development of other economic sectors. It must be also a effective macro-economic instrument of the Government”. During the past years, the State has issued a number of legal documents, policies and measures with the aim of restructuring and reforming the SOEs system according to the Party Resolution. Under the reform impacts, the SOEs system has experienced positive changes, achieving certain results and contributing the success of the Vietnamese economy in the last 15 years. But this process is still under implementation with its problems and issues which need to continue to be resolved. One of the big problem is the lack of experience as well as the theoretical basis for an effective SOEs reform. For such reason, the choice of the theme as “some measures to continue the SOEs reform in Vietnam” assumes an important meaning. Following are the objectives: (i) presentation and discussion of theoretical issues regarding the SOEs reform in Vietnam; (ii) presentation and discussion of the results and problems of the SOEs reform through analysis of the present situation of SOEs; (iii) proposal of new policies and measures for further reforms. The subjects of the thesis are the SOEs in the Vietnamese industry. The research will be focused on the three components of SOEs system such as SOEs system, the State management mechanism over the SOEs and the organizational form of State management over SOEs. The temporal period will be considered from the beginning of Renovation in Vietnam (1986) up to now, in other words from the start of the transition from centralized and planned economy to market economy which coincides with an enormous change in the whole Vietnamese SOEs system.