At the New Economic Forum - VNEF 2025, Dr. Nguyen Van Than - Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) assessed that the participation of businesses and FDI investors plays an extremely important role for the small and medium enterprise (SME) community.
FDI not only brings abundant financial resources, but is also a channel to spread knowledge, technology and management experience for small and medium-sized enterprises in the country. This is a force that can become a fulcrum and a partner for Vietnamese enterprises to learn from and improve competitiveness.
"The important thing is that small and medium-sized enterprises need to make more efforts to increase their participation in the supply chain and supporting industries in the ecosystem of foreign enterprises. Even in very simple production stages in the production chain of FDI enterprises, Vietnamese enterprises are still unable to participate, so that this part of the work is done by foreign enterprises, while Vietnamese enterprises are fully capable of taking on the responsibility" - Dr. Nguyen Van Than proposed.
To remove difficulties for small and medium-sized enterprises, Dr. Nguyen Van Than recommended that for enterprises with revenue under 1 billion VND, there should be a more preferential tax payment mechanism. The benefits from the institution will encourage more businesses to participate in the market, thereby creating a spillover effect for the economy.
Regarding access to capital, although interest rates have been reduced many times by the State Bank, in reality, small and medium-sized enterprises still have difficulty accessing loans from commercial banks, due to many barriers in mortgages and procedures.
"It is necessary to change the thinking of considering mortgages as the main thing, mortgages as only a side effect, and at the same time improve the credit guarantee mechanism so that funds can truly expand lending services. At the same time, it is necessary to innovate the lending model, take advantage of digital banking and apply digital finance to provide capital directly, quickly, and at low cost" - Mr. Than suggested.
Regarding support for start-ups and governance, Dr. Nguyen Van Than recommended that the State should have preferential policies for enterprises preparing to establish. At the same time, there should be a policy to increase management training and financial support to help small and medium enterprises grow sustainably.
Sharing the same view, Mr. Nguyen Viet Cuong, Financial Expert, Vice Chairman of KAFI Securities Company affirmed that - which is always an important issue for any enterprise, both small and medium enterprises and large enterprises.
Mr. Nguyen Viet Cuong said that one of the proposals for small and medium-sized enterprises to access capital is to form a credit rating system. The credit rating system will decide whether it is easier or more difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises to access capital.
"When forming a national-level small and medium-sized enterprise credit rating system, capital providers can easily look at enterprises at AAA or BB credit levels to assess how businesses should access and implement loans.
"With an effective, transparent credit rating system at the national level built specifically for small and medium-sized enterprises, the opportunity for small and medium-sized enterprises to access different sources of capital is extremely large, creating motivation for them to increase their competitiveness in the new era of the country" - Mr. Cuong hopes.
