VietNamNet Bridge – It is very likely that the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) fails to submit the plan on improving the state owned enterprises’ (SOEs) operation efficiency on schedule, slated for November. The drafting has finished, but the figures seem to be unreliable.

Deputy Head of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) Tran Xuan Lich has affirmed that there are no sources which can provide “absolutely accurate” figures about SOEs.

“And not only the figures about SOEs, but the statistics about other business fields are also unreliable,” Lich said.

Analysts have also commented that the figures about SOEs do not truly reflect the current situation of the enterprises. If the figures are reliable, then SOEs are now in the perfect conditions and no need to reform them as economists think.

When assessing the achievements of SOEs, the MPI’s draft plan said that the business efficiency and labor productivity have been, step by step, improved.

In order to prove the conclusion, MPI cited the figures provided by the General Statistics Office GSO, which said that the number of unprofitable SOEs has been decreasing, even in the difficult period as well.

The ratio of pre-tax profit on the total business capital of SOEs has been considerably improved after 10 years of restructuring, while the ratio of profit on revenue is higher by 1.35 times than the average ratio of total enterprises in the national economy, while the ratio of pretax profit on stockholder equity is 1.3 times higher. In the 2007-2009, the ratio of labor productivity on revenue was 1.5-1.7 times higher than that of foreign invested enterprises (FIEs).

However, it is the drafting plan which pointed out that SOEs still cannot meet the requirements of the country development, while the capital cost needed to create revenue is higher than the average index of the whole enterprise system. Especially, the losses incurred by SOEs are much higher than that of private enterprises, while SOEs’ competitiveness remains weak.

Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Van Trung also said he half believes the figures cited in the report. Meanwhile, economists emphasized that the draft plan on restructuring SOEs being complied by MPI, can be seen as a “declaration on economic reform”, and what will happen, if it is written based on unreliable figures?

The economists said that the figures provided by GSO were sourced from the reports by enterprises and local authorities, while no one can be sure about the accuracy of the figures. Therefore, they said, the unreliable figures must not be used for the plan which will serve as the basis for the government to make decisions in regulating the national economy.

The representative from the Enterprise Renovation Committee belonging to the Ministry of Construction said at a recent conference, that even the officials of the committee find it difficult to collect figures from the enterprises put under the management of the ministry. He said that enterprises can “process” different reports on the same issue, after considering who will receive their reports.

In general, private businesses declare the profits lower than the actual profits in order to evade tax. Foreign invested enterprises make the so called “price transfer” to avoid corporate income tax, while SOEs declare the profits higher than the actual profits, because they want to exaggerate their achievements.

An official from the Enterprises’ Finance Department under the Ministry of Finance also said that he himself finds it difficult to access financial information of enterprises.

“Every year, we ask state owned economic groups and general corporations to send reports, but we only get reports after much entreating,” he said.

Lich from CIEM also said that the plan drafters have to use the statistics provided by GSO, because this is the official source, while there is no other source which can provide absolutely accurate figures.

In fact, there are more accurate figures, but he said, it is not easy to access the sources. An energy group delivers reports at every meeting, but all the documents are shown as “confidential”, therefore, the figures are just used for reference, not for official use.

Source: TBKTVN