Industrial restructuring and enterprise development. The state, importance and development strategies for the fisheries sector of Vietnam

Abstract

This paper presents the importance, the state of affairs and the development strategies of the state-owned enterprises in the Fishery sector of Vietnam. The purpose is, firstly, to review state-owned enterprise reform literature of relevance to Vietnam. Secondly, the reform of state-owed enterprises in Vietnam particularly in the Fisheries Sector is reviewed to determine the important issues and problems as well as the its role in the renovation process of Vietnamese fisheries state-sector enterprises. Finally, the opportunities, conditions, and obstacles for the reform are identified in the sector economic development. The review of the state-owned enterprise reform in Vietnam suggests that the diversification of ownership is one of the most important factors affecting successes of the economic reform. There is a need for accelerating equitisation of state-owned enterprises to have more involvement of private sectors. In the Fisheries sector, inefficient operations of fisheries state-owned enterprises have imposed financial burden on the national budget. Data of financial performance of fisheries enterprises including state general corporations and equitised companies is employed to observe changes of their profitability, operating efficiency, and leverages. Nonetheless, restricted accessibility of records of state-owned enterprise financial performance caused some limitations of analysis of financial and economic performances. The empirical result shows that equitised companies have been operating much more efficiently than preequitisation. The state capitals are being invested with higher returns and more significantly, budgetary burden was removed. Some obstacles such as incomplete and irrelevant regulations and lack of broad-based consensus of equitisation have accounted for lags of the reform process. It is necessary to create a more effective policy and legal frameworks, more incentives for actors participating in the process and more stable macroeconomic environments.