Partnership dialogue speeds up SoE restructuring, tax reform
(VOV) - The Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the World Bank (WB) on July 23 co-hosted a high-level dialogue meeting of the Public Finance Partnership Group (PFPG) in Hanoi with a focus on promoting PFPG activities in 2015-2016, restructuring state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and reforming tax/custom procedures.
MoF Deputy Minister Truong Chi Trung said the conference helps Vietnamese agencies, international organisations and development partners better understand viewpoints and policies of each other regarding the above-mentioned fields.
Dang Quyet Tien, the MoF Finance Department Deputy Head told the conference 61 out of 289 SoEs have already been equitized and there is much more work to be done to equitize more than 200 others by the end of the year.
A representative from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) relayed that equitisation is an initial step in restructuring SOEs, however the bottom line must be to improve overall business governance capacities after the equitisation process is completed.
Aaron Batten from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said that just around 8% of SoEs update their financial reports on websites, which means a serious lack of transparency, which makes very difficult to grasp business performance and post equitisation process.