VietNamNet Bridge – The State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC), in a recent report on its operation in this year’s first half, said that it encountered many difficulties in receiving, selling and transferring State stakes.

The firm received documents from some ministries and provinces which wanted to transfer State stakes in State-owned enterprises under their management to SCIC, but many issues remained to be solved before SCIC could take over such stakes.

SCIC has assessed and identified numerous issues and demanded that such issues be made transparent in the process of equitization before the Government’s finance arm could receive such stakes, but no progress has been made, according to a report released by SCIC’s general director Lai Van Dao.

The report gives the names of administering agencies that want to transfer State stakes to include the ministries of Industry and Trade; Agriculture and Rural Development; and Transport; as well as Haiphong City and Lam Dong Province governments.

Lai Van Dao said that the progress of transferring State-owned shares from ministries and localities has been slow.

Regarding the selling of State stakes held by SCIC, the corporation has divested State stakes in 31 companies, including sales of entire State stakes at 26 firms and partial stakes at five enterprises. SCIC collected VND863 billion from such transfers, meeting 65% of its target and surging 47% year-on-year.

However, SCIC said that the number of companies where State capital has been transferred is still far smaller than its target due to recent difficulties in the economy, the stock market and the investment environment.

On the other hand, SCIC has contacted some State-owned groups and corporations to obtain information on their plans to divest capital from non-core businesses, and SCIC will consider whether to take over those stakes.

Some big State-owned enterprises have sent their information to SCIC to help it consider stake transfers, including Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG), Vietnam Electricity Group (EVN), Vietnam National Oil and Gas Industries Group (PVN), Vietnam Coal and Mineral Industry Group (Vinacomin), and Vietnam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines) among others.

As of now, SCIC has invested VND12 trillion in many projects and enterprises and is eyeing more investment plans this year in financial, transport infrastructure, and medicine areas.

Relating to financial investment, SCIC has sold corporate bonds issued by Development Investment Construction Corporation (DIC), which helped it regain VND350 billion in its initial investment and VND154 billion in profit.

As of June 30, SCIC’s portfolio had included stakes in 335 enterprises with the value of over VND15 trillion and combined chartered capital of VND65 trillion.

As of December last year, the value of State-owned capital managed by SCIC at 349 companies had reached VND71 trillion or 6.8 times higher than the book value of VND10.5 trillion.

SCIC will withdraw capital from 376 enterprises, according to its restructuring plan toward 2015.

SGT/VNN