Businesses propose removing obstacles in capital, finance and land
At the Workshop "Restructuring State-Owned Enterprises: From Resource Allocation to Leading Growth" organized by Tien Phong Newspaper on the morning of July 21, Mr. Dao Trong Cuong - Deputy General Director of Vinachem - said that the group's restructuring process in the past time has achieved many positive results thanks to the direction of the Government and ministries and branches. By June 2025, Vinachem's parent company has eliminated all accumulated losses, completed the targets according to the Government's direction, creating a financial foundation for the next development phase.
However, according to Mr. Cuong, the restructuring process still has some obstacles related to financial mechanisms, capital sources and land. He proposed synchronous solutions for these three areas, and at the same time study specific mechanisms or a separate resolution to handle outstanding obstacles, thereby accelerating the progress of equitization and restructuring of state-owned enterprises.
For Vinachem, the chemical industry requires large investment capital needs, long capital recovery times, while projects must meet increasingly high requirements for technology, environmental protection, green growth and sustainable development. Therefore, businesses need stable medium and long-term capital sources to implement strategic projects.
Mr. Cuong also said that previous slow-progress projects such as Ninh Binh Fertilizer, DAP No. 2 and Ha Bac Fertilizer are currently facing difficulties mainly in project negotiation and finalization, while other basic obstacles have been gradually removed and factories are maintaining stable production and business operations.
In addition, Vinachem proposed to soon form concentrated chemical industrial parks associated with local planning to increase chain linkage efficiency, reduce logistics costs, improve environmental treatment capacity and increase competitiveness.
Similar to Vinachem, some other state-owned enterprises also believe that the restructuring process is still facing barriers regarding the efficiency of capital and land use and legal mechanisms.
Representative of Northern Food Corporation (VINAFOOD1), Mr. Nguyen Vu Hoan - Member of the Member Council - said that the enterprise has implemented a restructuring project according to plan but faced many difficulties, in which the efficiency of capital use is still low.
According to Mr. Hoan, the food industry has a very thin profit margin, at times selling one kg of rice only yields a profit of about 50 VND. Meanwhile, the capital scale of many member enterprises is only from 5-10 billion VND, causing many obstacles to attract investors. Problems with land and prolonged legal documents also affect business valuation, asset handling and divestment.
From practical operations, VINAFOOD1 proposed to continue to improve the legal system on state capital management, soon remove obstacles related to land, diversify divestment methods, strengthen decentralization associated with post-inspection mechanisms and build a set of criteria for evaluating state-owned enterprises based on capital utilization efficiency, innovation and contribution to growth.
Shifting from arrangement thinking to improving business efficiency
Speaking at the workshop, Mr. Phan Duc Hieu - Member of the National Assembly's Economic and Finance Committee - emphasized: "Restructuring is not simply reducing the number of enterprises through mergers, dissolution or divestment, but the core goal must be to improve the operational efficiency and competitiveness of state-owned enterprises and the state-owned economic sector.
He proposed three groups of key solutions. The first is to definitively handle financial backlogs, legal obligations and land that are hindering the equitization and restructuring of enterprises. The Ministry of Finance needs to comprehensively review the obstacles, classify them according to its authority to submit to the National Assembly, the Government or ministries to issue handling mechanisms, and even study a specific resolution.
The second is to improve corporate governance quality according to international practices, select principles suitable to Vietnam's conditions and institutionalize them into the legal system, especially regulations on modern governance, recruiting professional leaders and independent board members.
The third is to strongly shift from the method of arranging and divesting capital according to administrative thinking to a market mechanism. Mr. Hieu believes that it is necessary to soon upgrade the State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC) into a professional state investment fund, to be given more proactive power in managing investment portfolios, buying and selling and restructuring capital according to market efficiency, thereby improving the efficiency of using state capital and increasing the competitiveness of state-owned enterprises in the period 2026-2030.
