Many ministries, branches “ignore” to transfer enterprises to SCIC

In the workshop “Transfer State-owned Enterprises to SCIC” held by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) on February 21, 2017, Mr. Phan Duc Hieu, Deputy Director of the CIEM said, since 2013, there have been around 234 State-owned Enterprises having capital transfer agreements to the SCIC, however, only 61 enterprises have reached agreements, 173 enterprises have not yet agreed.

According to the CIEM, the State capital in these 173 enterprises is about 107 billion vnd, in which, the capital in enterprises under ministries is 46.9 billion vnd, the capital of enterprises under provinces and localities is 60.2 billion vnd.

In particular, 32 enterprises are under ministries, branches, most of the Ministries of Culture, Sports and Tourism with 10 enterprises, after is the Ministry of Industry and Trade with 8 enterprises, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development with 5 enterprises, and the Ministry of Health with 4 enterprises.

The cause of the problem, according to Mr. Hieu, is that many localities, ministries, branches want to keep these enterprises to manage, sell capital, or only transfer weak enterprises to SCIC. Meanwhile, SCIC does not want to receive enterprises having difficulties.

“Many localities do not want to transfer their enterprises to the SCIC because these enterprises have big contribution to the localities’ development, either public enterprises or business enterprises”, Mr. Hieu adds.

Besides, there are sanctions for agencies, organizations having responsibilities to transfer, but the number of enterprises which have not yet transferred is still large.

Notably, when Mr. Nguyen Dinh Cung, Director of the CIEM – who hosted the workshop invited representatives of ministries, branches, localities to speak their opinions, some of them were absent. Among 5 ministries having enterprises needing to transfer, there were only opinions of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Ministry of Transport, the rest were the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, and the Ministry of Health were also absent. The localities were too.

Also at the workshop, according to Mr. Nguyen Hong Hien, Deputy General Director of the SCIC, accumulated by the end of December 2016, the agency has received the right to represent the State ownership in more than 1,000 enterprises with the total capitalization of 9.900 billion vnd (more than 15,000 billion vnd at the market price), equal to 1% of the State capital in enterprises, in which over 80% are small and weak enterprises.

In the past period, though the Prime Minister, Ministry of Finance has issued many documents to direct, many ministries, branches, and localities have transferred capital to the SCIC slowly. Many of them have not paid adequate attention and directed the transfer the rights to represent the owner of the enterprises’ capital to the SCIC.

Some ministries, localities have delayed transferring or only transferring a small number of enterprises in their total number of enterprises subject to transfer.