“Our company was officially established in 2004, but considering the operations of the company and the activities of big shareholders, subsidiaries and predecessors, in reality, Masan Group has been operating since 1996,” Masan says on its official website.

The National Assembly approved the Vietnam Company Law and Private Enterprise Law in 1990. The enactment of the law marked an important milestone in the history of Vietnamese business development: this was the first time that Vietnam’s private sector was officially recognized by law, which created a cradle for businesses like Masan to emerge. 

Over the last 27 years, Masan, from a small business, has become the leading company in the fields of FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), meat production, retail, food and beverages, and financial services, with annual revenue of tens of trillions of dong and profit of trillions of dong each year.

Many private enterprises have been set up since then and made-in-Vietnam products are available all over the world, while Vietnam is building itself into a production base for the world.

Established 35 years ago, Secoin is an unburnt-brick manufacturer with a network of nine factories throughout the country. Its products are used for important domestic construction works and exported to 60 markets.

Dinh Hong Ky, president of Secoin, said that his business has to struggle to survive difficulties caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The exports have gone down, while consumption in the domestic market is weak because of the frozen real estate market and tightened credit,” Ky said.

However, with the support of the government and new policies adopted in the difficult period, Secoin, like other enterprises, has weathered the storm and regained their strength.

Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung, when reviewing the recent economic performance, said that Vietnam remains a ‘bright spot’ in the world’s economy.

As many as 60,000 businesses joined and re-joined the market in the third quarter alone, an increase of 18 percent compared with the same period in 2022. And in the first nine months of the year, 165,000 new businesses were established, or 1.2 times higher than the average level in 2018-2022.

The push by Politburo

The Vietnamese business community has been informed about the release of Politburo’s Resolution 41 on promoting the role of the Vietnamese business community in the new development period.

Tran Ba Duong, president of Thaco, an automobile manufacturer, said he fully sympathizes with the resolution’s content.

“We are happy that the new resolution continues to affirm the important role and position of the business community and dignifies it as one of the key forces to accelerate the industrialization and modernization of the country,” Duong said.

Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, president of Sovico Group, commented that Resolution 41 has heartened Vietnamese businessmen.

“With the good news, we are strongly determined to make contributions to build a prosperous Vietnam,” Thao said.

Policies to serve businesses

Vietnam now has many businesses, but most of them are small and medium scale. The goal of having one million businesses by 2020 was unattainable, and by that time, Vietnam had  800,000 enterprises.

Meanwhile, the number of large businesses remains modest, which explains why the private sector’s role of leading the economy is still not clear. Some business fields are still dominated by foreign invested enterprises. “Working as hired workers for foreign companies in the home playing field" is the phrase which describes the current situation of Vietnamese enterprises.

Meanwhile, a number of managers of large enterprises don’t respect laws and have been forced to leave the market, raising concern about the development of Vietnamese enterprises in the future.

That is why Resolution 41 says that Vietnamese businesspeople in the new development period must be ethical and have a healthy business culture as the core, promote the spirit of respecting the law, be patriotic, and have the will of national self-reliance and desire to contribute to the country’s development.

The government’s Resolution 58 dated April 21, 2023 set the goal of obtaining 1.5 million businesses by 2025. Nguyen Minh Thao from the Central Institute of Economic Management (CIEM) described the goal as extremely challenging.

“The goal of having 1.5 million businesses shows the government’s willingness and determination in improving the business environment and encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit. However, it may be unattainable if Vietnam doesn’t make efforts to reform and support businesses on their development path,” Thao said.

Luong Bang