Nguyen Thi Hong Nga, Editor-in-Chief of Giao Thong Newspaper, said newspapers saw difficulties after the Covid-19 pandemic. Their revenue declined as the traditional ad market shrank, and as enterprises cut their advertising budgets. 

Meanwhile, the mechanism under which press agencies can get financial support from the state budget for political and propaganda tasks remains unclear and still cannot be implemented.

For press agencies, political communication, or propagandizing and disseminating the Party and State’s policies and guidelines, is an extremely important task. All newspapers endeavor to fulfill the task, but with weak resources.

Newspapers are listed as "public non-business units which have revenue" so it is unreasonable to consider them as enterprises which must pay corporate income tax. 

Nga proposed a preferential corporate income tax rate of 10 percent on press agencies instead of 20 percent as currently applied. 

National Assembly Deputies, the Vietnam Journalist Association and other press agencies have applauded the opinion.

The Ministry of Finance (MOF), which is drafting the corporate income tax (amended), has also proposed a 10 percent tax rate, but only for print newspapers. However, all press agencies are facing difficulties, and they need the preferential tax rate.

“Press agencies all have to make every effort to improve their reputation, retain their readership and attract readers online,” Nga said.

“Maintaining our presence in the cyberspace environment alone is difficult work. We will have to give up if we don’t have resources for development,” she added.

The production costs of e-newspapers, radio and television companies are very high, even higher than the production costs of print newspapers. 

In general, they have to spend a lot on multi-media products, keep information updated 24/7 and have to work with no holidays. They also have to make big investments in technical infrastructure, transmission lines, hosts, technologies, and retrain the workforce for digital transformation.

E-newspapers' major sources of income are advertisements and political communication products to the state’s orders. Ninety nine percent of e-newspapers either don’t collect fees from readers or collect modest fees, which are not high enough to cover expenses.

If newspapers can enjoy the 10 percent preferential tax rate, they would have more money to train workers, develop infrastructure, and apply high tech to fulfill the tasks assigned to them in the new circumstances.

“If we can enjoy the 10 percent tax rate, we will have hundreds of million of dong each year injected into the workforce and technology,” Nga said.

Nga said that despite the great efforts to diversify products and optimize costs, Giao Thong newspaper is still facing the risk of revenue decrease this year. 

Most of the packages ordered by the state still cannot be deployed because its economic technical norms have not been approved and the unit prices under new regulations have not been fixed. Meanwhile, revenue from ads has decreased.

Dinh Minh Trung, deputy Editor-in-Chief of Tuoi Tre Newspaper, said that in current conditions, the state should consider press agencies as subjects for tax incentives.

“If the National Assembly approves the plan to cut tax to 10 percent, this will help press agencies have more resources for investment for development,” Trung said.

According to the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Nguoi Lao Dong Newspaper, the boom of social network platforms has led to sharp drop in revenue of press agencies. Many agencies have been struggling to survive.

“Ads tend to move to other spaces, such as digital space. Online sales and e-commerce have broken the traditional trading structure,” he said, adding that newspapers have been seriously impacted by the changes in sources of revenue.

“Enterprises and ad agents tend to place ads on other channels rather than newspapers,” he explained. “Cyberspace is now the major battlefield of newspapers."

“Press agencies are making investments and undergoing restructuring to regain cyberspace. This is a digital space, digital technology, digital workforce and digital data,” he added.

Nguoi Lao Dong is pouring money into social network platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and digital television in an effort to approach more readers, as well as increase sources of revenue.

“All of these investments need huge budgets,” he said.

N. Huyen - Ho Van