Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has requested State-owned enterprises (SOEs) to reform governance, improve production and business efficiency, and strongly promote development investment.

In his directive signed on February 22, the government leader attributed Vietnam’s significant achievements in 2023 partly to important contributions by SOEs.

Last year, their total revenue was estimated at over 1,652 quadrillion VND (67.1 billion USD) and their pre-tax profit around 125.8 quadrillion VND, 4% and 8% higher than the respective targets. The firms contributed about 166 quadrillion VND to the state budget, 8% higher than the target, statistics show.

SOEs have increasingly shown their leading role in important and essential sectors of the economy, helping stabilise the macro-economy, control inflation, boost growth, guarantee major economic balances, and promote socio-economic development and national defence, he noted.

However, PM Chinh also pointed out certain shortcomings, saying some SOEs have yet to fully capitalise on the state resources, capital, and assets assigned to them or meet investment disbursement targets; some posted losses; their competitiveness, science - technology application, innovation, and digital transformation remain limit ed; and corporate governance reform is still slow.

Given this, he demanded SOEs, especially their presidents, general directors/directors, and the persons representing the state capital at those firms to improve their awareness and sense of responsibility towards the management of the state capital and assets entrusted to them.

He told them to promote the self-reliance spirit, proactiveness, creativity, and the readiness to think big, act bold, and bear responsibility for the sake of national interests.

The SOEs were asked to fruitfully and efficiently carry out the plan on enterprise restructuring for the 2021 - 2025 period, their development strategies, annual and five-year production, business, and investment plans, along with related tasks and directions issues by the Government and the PM.

They were also asked to step up nationally key projects in important fields to create momentum for sectors and the entire economy to grow, carry out timely capital disbursement to accelerate investment projects, and consider increasing investment in innovation and emerging sectors.

The enterprises need to prioritise resources for their core business fields, address the scattering and ineffectiveness of investment, improve the innovation capacity, reform and align their corporate governance models with international practices, re-organise apparatuses, enhance competitiveness in the domestic and international markets, and create foundation for building development orientations and strategic visions for the next period, the Government leader demanded.

He also ordered them to overfulfill production and business targets to make the biggest possible contributions to guaranteeing major balances of the economy, stabilising the macro-economy, generating revenue for the state budget, creating jobs and ensuring the life of workers, and implementing social security policies.

In addition, PM Chinh asked SOEs to continue upholding their way-paving and leading role in the economy and ensure that they are the pioneer force in terms of innovation, digital transformation, and economic recovery.

In his directive, the PM also assigned tasks to SOEs operating in certain fields, ministries, sectors, the People’s Committees of provinces and centrally-run cities, and the agencies representing the state capital at those businesses./.