Viet Nam National Oil and Gas Group (PVN) tops the list of 500 most profitable companies, according to a ranking announced by Viet Nam Report Company.

This was released at an award ceremony at the Viet Nam National Convention Centre on Thursday.

PVN was followed by Viettel Group, Samsung Electronics Viet Nam Co Ltd, Honda Viet Nam Company, PetroVietnam Gas Joint Stock Corporation, Viet Nam Dairy Products JSC, Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Viet Nam, Hoa Phat Group JSC, Viet Nam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade, and Vingroup JSC.

The ranking aims to honour enterprises that are profitable and have the potential to become the backbone of the Vietnamese economy and contribute to promoting Vietnamese brands to the international business community.

Experts also said the finance-banking, information, retail distribution, petroleum, real estate and public services (water, electricity) sectors would have high prospect for profit increase in 2018-19 period.

The increasing profit would be thanks to a stable economic growth, improved investment environment and increasing number of middle-income people, changes of consumption habits and rapid urbanisation. In addition, the efforts to save business operation and management costs would also contribute to improving their profitability.

Viet Nam Report also released the Viet Nam Earnings Insight 2018, saying that most of the firms highly appreciated the Government’s macro-economic efforts to curb inflation, adjust exchange rates and improve information and legal documents publication.

More than 97 per cent of enterprises rated efforts to maintain economic stability and improve the business climate as “good” or “excellent” in the first nine months of the year. Enterprises expressed discontent in the effectiveness of administrative services, infrastructure and access to land.

The survey also said businesses in the Profit500 have promoted investments while focusing on building high quality human resources, meeting with requirements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Research on retail, food and beverage sectors showed that consumers’ behaviour has been significantly changed in the wave of economic and cultural integration; the popular internet connection trend and requirements to higher quality products.

The e-commerce trend was expected to strongly develope in the future thanks to internet connection and the increasing rate of smartphone users in Viet Nam. This could contribute to establishing omni-channels in the future – a favourite model for all scales of business to rapidly increase their sale.

Viet Nam Report also awarded the Top 10 most reputable companies in the food and beverage sector and Top 10 most reputable companies in retail sector. — VNS