Top 500 Largest Enterprises in Vietnam in 2024: Affirming the ability to overcome "headwinds"

	Vietnam's largest enterprises stand firm during the pandemic
	Vietnam’s 500 largest enterprises in 2022 announced

Proportion of enterprise numbers and total revenue of 3 sectors under VNR500 ranking. Source: Vietnam Report

Tough challenges

2024 is considered an important pivotal year for the 2021-2025 planning goals, but the difficulties have not yet ended: slow economic growth, geopolitical instability, and escalating inflation after a long period of the pandemic.

Although the Government, businesses and people are united and working together to overcome the "headwinds", the results have clearly differentiated.

Statistics from the VNR500 ranking in 2024 show that the Industry - Construction sector is under the most pressure. Although it is one of the driving forces of the economic sector with an overwhelming number of enterprises, the total revenue of the sector decreased by 0.7% compared to the previous year.

Meanwhile, total revenue of the Service sector and financial enterprises witnessed an increase of 13.7% and 23.1%, respecitively.

In particular, the agriculture - Forestry - Fishery sector, due to the lack of new orders in 2023, resulted in a 7.8% decrease in total revenue at the end of the year compared to the previous year.

The ranking of the Top 10 Largest Enterprises in Vietnam in 2024 also clearly shows the above differentiation when only 1 representative of the Industry - Construction sector, Vingroup, remains in the ranking. The "big brother" Hoa Phat was knocked out by the Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (VietinBank).

The remaining sectors still consolidated their performance. Specifically, Samsung Electronics Vietnam Thai Nguyen Co., Ltd. maintained its position as the leader, followed by familiar names: Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (Petro Vietnam), Vietnam National Petroleum Group (Petrolimex), Military Industry and Telecommunications Group (Viettel), Vietnam National Coal and Mineral Industries Group (Vinacomin) ...

In terms of the criteria for evaluating the business performance of all enterprises in the VNR500 2024 ranking, the average return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) tended to decrease, down 0.7% and 2.0% respectively year on year.

In particular, the foreign direct investment (FDI) sector recorded better efficiency in using assets and equity than the other two sectors. The return on sales (ROS) of the State and Private sectors had a common downward trend of 1.9% and 2.4% respectively, but the FDI sector recorded an increase of 0.1% compared to the previous year.

Positive signals

Vietnam Report's survey results also showed positive signals when recording the rate of enterprises with increased revenue, profit and number of orders compared to the survey results in the previous year.

Production and business performance in the first 9 months of 2023-2024.Source: Vietnm Report

Specifically, the proportion of enterprises with revenue and profit growth accounted for 7.7% and 10.5%, respectively, much higher than the level of less than 5% of the previous year.

From a macro perspective, GDP in the first 9 months of 2024 grew by 6.82%, much higher than the 4.40% year on year and similar to the growth rate in the same period in the years before the pandemic.

However, experts say that the economy has only just overcome the most difficult time, and there are still many obstacles.

In the first 10 months of 2024, newly registered and adjusted FDI capital increased by 14.3% over the same period; the industrial production index (IIP) increased by 8.3%; the total import-export turnover of goods is estimated at 647.87 billion USD, ...

These are a series of impressive numbers showing optimistic signals for the economy as well as the Vietnamese business community.

However, experts say that the economy has only just overcome the most difficult time, which means there are many obstacles ahead.

According to the survey results on difficulties in the coming time of Vietnam Report, 77.2% of surveyed enterprises chose Economic - political instability in the world, 74.3% chose Competition between enterprises in the same industry, 57.1% chose Increasing prices of input materials, 51.4% chose Slow growth of the world economy, 40.0% chose Issues related to supply chains, logistics, distribution.

Therefore, businesses long to receive the Government’s accompany and support them with policies to exempt or reduce taxes and fees or extend tax payment deadlines for businesses; stabilize the macro-economy, control inflation; review and cut administrative procedures, simplify regulations related to business activities; improve infrastructure, especially logistics infrastructure; strengthen trade promotion activities, etc. This is a solid foundation, creating a premise for businesses to make great strides in the final year of the 5-year Plan 2021-2025.