Workers at Nhon Trach 2 Power Plant in Dong Nai Province. Restructuring SOEs requires more efforts and determination from relevant agencies, said Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh. — VNA/VNS Photo Huy Hung

HA NOI (Biz Hub) — Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh has asked for greater efforts and further determination of ministries, localities and State-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the restructuring of SOEs.

He made these observations as the workload for the rest of the year as per the approved plan was huge.

In the third quarter of this year, privatisation plans of 44 SOEs must be completed and approved while asset evaluation of 127 SOEs have to be announced. The target for the last quarter was to approve the privatisation plans of these 127 SOEs.

The Deputy PM also urged for the withdrawal of capital from non-core businesses to be hastened, divestment plans to be raised within this quarter to an estimated VND18.99 trillion (US$871.1 million), and investments of SOEs in five sectors including real estate, securities, and banking, in addition to insurance and funds.

2015 was the final year for the implementation of the SOE restructuring project for the 2011-2015 period which raised the ambitious target of privatising 432 SOEs in the last two years. With the new criteria, the number of SOEs which have to be privatised in the 2014-2015 period increased by 100.

As the privatisation process of SOEs was not as fast as expected, leaving a heavy workload in the second half of this year, Ninh stressed that if efforts were not enhanced, Viet Nam would hardly fulfil SOE restructuring for this year and the 2011-2015 period.

The government's statistics showed that 143 SOEs were privatised in 2014, failing to meet the goal of privatising as many as 200 SOEs for last year.

Statistics revealed at the conference reviewing SOEs privatisation in the first half of this year held late June in Ha Noi showed that only 61 out of 289 SOEs which had to be privatised this year completed the process.

As the lack of instructions caused difficulties to SOEs during their privatisation implementation, Ninh asked ministries to regularly issue policies about revamping the management and restructuring of SOEs to fulfil the plan.

Causes for the slowdown in privatisation must be studied to draw from the experiences and find solutions, he stressed. — VNS