VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam, for the first time in its history, has one enterprise meeting the requirements to be listed in the Fortune Global 500, the list of the global 500 biggest conglomerates worldwide.

The first position for PetroVietnam

Vietnam Report and VietNamNet newspaper on January 17 officially released the 2013 VNR 500, the list of the 500 Vietnamese biggest enterprises in terms of turnover.

PetroVietnam, the national oil and gas group, obtained the huge revenue of VND772 trillion, or nearly $37 billion in 2013. If Fortune adds PetroVietnam into its Fortune Global 500, PetroVietnam would rank 300th or somewhere near the position.

Besides PetroVietnam, the other six enterprises also got the turnover of over VND100 trillion in 2013, higher than the turnover of the enterprise ranking 500th in the US Fortune 500.

VNR 500’s enterprises getting bigger

Vietnam Report has noted that the minimum turnover enterprises must have to be put into the VNR 500 list has been increasing steadily since 2007, when the first VNR 500 was released, except 2012.

In that year, the business performance was bad due to the economic uncertainties in 2011, the sky high inflation rate of 18 percent and the frozen real estate market.

The majority of the enterprises in the VNR 500 are private run businesses. However, state owned enterprises are always on the highest positions.

44 percent of enterprises in the 2013 list are private run businesses, while 40 percent are state owned and 15 percent are foreign invested.

In terms of revenue, state owned enterprises make up 62 percent of the total revenue of all the VNR 500’s enterprises in 2013. This shows that state economic sector is still dominant in the economy.

Meanwhile, private businesses’ turnover accounted for 19.4 percent and foreign invested enterprises 18.5 percent of the total turnover of VNR 500’s enterprises.

Mineral industries & petroleum, electricity and finance are the three sectors which have the highest numbers of representatives in the VNR 500.

Seventy-two percent of VNR 500’s businesses are industrial producers which make up 73.6 percent of total turnover. Twenty-two percent are service companies with the turnover accounting for 23.5 percent. Six percent of businesses are in the seafood, agriculture and forestry sector with 6 percent and 3 percent, respectively.

Mechanical engineering, electricity, food & beverage are the three fields that have the highest ROE (return on equity) index. The figures are 0.47, 0.46 and 0.43 for the three, respectively. Meanwhile, the other fields have the index at below 0.4. This means that the businesses can earn less than 4 dong for every 10 dong they put into investments.

Confidence restored

When asked about the inflation rate in 2014, 64 percent of the CEOs in the VNR 500 said the rate would be higher than 7 percent, but it would still be controllable.

This coincides with the prediction made by the National Finance Supervision Council which believed the inflation rate would be 7 percent in 2014. Meanwhile, ADB has predicted the 8.2 percent inflation rate for Vietnam.

Regarding the business performance, 83.6 percent of polled CEOs showed their optimism, saying that the turnover of their businesses in 2014 would be higher than in 2013. Only 11.5 percent said there would be no big changes, and 5 percent think the business performance would be worse.

Vietnam Report