Hanoi (VNS/VNA) -The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) will transfer State capital ownershiprepresentative rights in five enterprises to the State Capital InvestmentCorporation (SCIC) in the first quarter of this year.
They included the Vietnam SteelCorporation, the Foreign Trade Freight Forwarding and Warehousing Joint StockCompany, the Vietnam Agricultural Products Joint Stock Company, theConstruction and Import-Export Joint Stock Company and the ConstructionInvestment and Building Materials Joint Stock Company, according to theministry’s recently-issued Directive No 3/CT-BCT.
The move is part of theministry’s efforts to implement the Prime Minister’s Directive No 01/CT-TTgissued early this year about speeding up the restructuring, equitisation anddivestment in State-owned enterprises (SOEs).
The Prime Minister’s directivesets March 31 as the deadline for ministries, ministerial-level agencies andlocal authorities to complete the transfer of State capital ownershiprepresentative rights in SOEs to the SCIC.
The progress of State capitaldivestment and SOE equitisation has been slow in recent years, so the PrimeMinister has asked ministries and local authorities to review and list SOEswhich must be equitised or divested from between 2018-2020 to ensure feasibility.If the divestment and equitisation face difficulties, the SOEs must betransferred to the SCIC.
According to Nguyen Chi Thanh,the SCIC’s deputy director, State capital ownership representative rights in around100 SOEs must be transferred to the SCIC. Thanh expected the transfer to becompleted before the deadline.
After receiving State capitalownership representative rights, the SCIC would focus on implementing financialand operational restructuring to improve efficiency and maximise the value ofState capital before divestment.
In 2018, the SCIC received Statecapital ownership representative rights in 14 SOEs worth more than 4 trillionVND (174 million USD), significant increases over sums received in the twoprevious years which were at around 1 trillion VND each. It sold State capitalownership representative rights in nine enterprises to collect 7.6 trillion VNDin 2018, nearly three times higher than the cost price.
The SCIC held a portfolio of 144enterprises as of the end of 2018 with a value of 20.94 trillion VND out of acharter capital of 85 trillion VND.
The SCIC reported an after-taxprofit of 8.2 trillion VND in 2018, 30 percent higher than 2017.-VNS/VNA