Hanoi (VNA) - The Government Inspectorate will carryout an inspection targeting State-owned enterprises (SOEs) in which theMinistry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) controls State capital.

The inspection will be conducted within 70 working days onSOEs which the ministry restructured during 2011-17, via re-arrangement,equitisation and divestment, the Inspectorate said in a decision on June 7.

The inspection team contains 11 members, led by Nguyen Duy Binh,senior inspector of the Government Inspectorate.

Bui Ngoc Lam, Deputy General Inspector of the GovernmentInspectorate, has asked the ministry to provide records and related documentsrequired by the inspection team.

MoIT also has to request its agencies to work with theinspection team and assist the team to fulfill and perform its work well, Lamsaid.

Lam has asked the inspection team to co-operate with MoIT andthe SOEs under the management of the ministry to carry out the workefficiently, avoiding costing those firms time and money.

According to the former director of the Vietnam Institute ofEconomics, Tran Dinh Thien, 508 SOEs were equitised in the 2011-15 period,fulfilling 96.5 percent of the plan, and it was considered a good result.

However, only 8 percent of the State shares were sold toprivate investors, thus the SOE equitisation in the last five-year period couldbe considered inefficient as those firms had failed to re-allocate theirresources to improve performance, he said.

“Equitised SOEs are still owned by the State with problemsrelating to business transparency, losses and inefficient use of State assets,while private companies have stood outside the management board of those SOEs,”Thien said.

He acknowledged the fact that equitisation of Vietnamese SOEsdid not mean privatisation when the State not only wanted to offload itsownership at high prices and use the resources efficiently but also expectedthe private sector to remain outsiders and transfer the State capital to unitsthat have poorly performed in using the resources.

Therefore, it was necessary to change the mindset of thoseSOE leaders towards market-based principles so that the restructuring of SOEscan be improved, he added.

According to the Ministry of Finance, 570 SOEs were equitisedin 2011-16. The total value of those companies was 797 trillion VND (35.4billion USD) with the Government holding nearly 27 percent of the figure.

In 2017-20, the Prime Minister approved a plan that targets127 SOEs to be equitised, including 44 for 2017, 64 for 2018, 18 for 2019 andone for 2020. The MoIT since 2016 has sold stakes in 17 SOEs, including sixcorporations and groups.

On January 1, 2018, MoIT offloaded shares in Binh SonRefinery and Petrochemicals Corporation, PetroVietnam Power Corporation andPetroVietnam Oil Corporation.

The ministry plans to sell its stakes in some large-cap firmssuch as the Vietnam National Petroleum Group (Petrolimex), HanoiBeer-Alcohol-Beverage Corporation (Habeco) and Vietnam Engine and AgriculturalMachinery Corporation (VEAM).-VNA