On October 7, when the National Assembly Standing Committee gave opinions on the draft Law on Management and Investment of State Capital in Enterprises, one of the contents of this draft law that received consensus from many delegates was to prohibit State-owned enterprises from investing and pouring capital into risky areas such as real estate, banking, insurance, securities, etc.
The consensus on banning this content is reasonable and timely. In fact, in the past, we have had too many bitter lessons when letting state-owned enterprises invest in risky areas, leading to great losses in both personnel and assets.
On the contrary, the content that has many conflicting opinions is Article 25 of the draft law, which stipulates that investment projects of enterprises must be approved by competent authorities or have investment policy decisions according to investment and public investment regulations. After being approved by competent authorities, enterprises shall implement investment projects according to regulations on investment, construction and other relevant laws.
On this issue, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Nguyen Khac Dinh has a very reasonable comment: State-owned enterprises will "not be able to do anything" with these regulations!
For a long time, there has been a comparison of the efficiency between private enterprises and state-owned enterprises. This is a somewhat lame comparison because these two types do not have the same starting point and complementary conditions.
Private enterprises are often effective because in addition to being autonomous and self-responsible, they also save time, simplify procedures, and reduce costs of "asking" for policies and procedures... While state-owned enterprises are the opposite, from large to small, everything must be submitted and requested to many levels of management.
Remember at a conference with state-owned enterprises in mid-June, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh raised the issue that state-owned enterprises need to consider a pilot plan to hire foreign executives and leaders who are not party members.
This is considered a good solution to solve the problem that many leaders of state-owned enterprises - especially at local levels - have limited management capacity.
However, state-owned enterprises should also be given more opportunities to demonstrate their capacity, first of all from the Law on Management and Investment of State Capital in Enterprises.
In reality, the treatment and handling of responsibilities at state-owned enterprises are still administrative in nature, not creating motivation associated with responsibilities according to market mechanisms.
For the leader of a state-owned enterprise, the most important requirement is not to lose state capital and to take full responsibility. However, as Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Nguyen Khac Dinh said: "If you have to ask for everything, how can you take full responsibility?"
To "force" state-owned enterprises to take full responsibility, we must first make them "beg" less and give them comprehensive authority!
