(MPI Portal) – On March 4th 2015, at the headquarters of the Ministry of Planning and Investment, Minister Bui Quang Vinh and Mr. Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom co-chaired Workshop on the evolving role of SOE in the economy – Implications for Vietnam. Attending the Workshop, there were economists, representatives of nine ministries and branches which are authorities directly managing SOEs and leaders of corporations, state corporations, the MPI’s departments.

Minister Bui Quang Vinh and Mr. Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom co-chairing the Workshop. Photo: Thanh Son (MPI Portal)

Speaking at the Workshop, Minister Bui Quang Vinh said that cooperation between Vietnam and Tony Blair Office was started in 2012. In 2013, the Prime Minister officially assigned the MPI as focal point for this cooperation. From April 2014 to April 2015, the two sides will focus on researching 3 contents, including: academic study of international experience in SOE reform; establishment of legal framework and deployment of pilot PPP model; cooperation in improvement of quality of FDI attraction into Vietnam.

For the last 20 years, Vietnam has continuously reformed SOEs. Quantity of SOEs in the 90s was about 12,000 and now about 5,600 according to official statistics of the MPI. In which, approximately 800 enterprises have 100% of state-owned capital and the rest were equitized. SOEs has accounted for a large proportion of the fields such as: telecommunication, financial and credit, rice export, etc. Minister Bui Quang Vinh stressed that SOE equitization must be more essential in the coming time in order to improve corporate governance.

Tony Blair Office has coordinated with many related ministries, branches of Vietnam and initially obtained some important results on reasoning and economic institutional reform in Vietnam.

Photo: Thanh Son (MPI Portal)

Mr. Tony Blair expressed his pleasure in contributing to Vietnam’s socio-economic development. He said that Vietnam should continue promoting progress to create more development opportunities in the coming time and SOE reform is a part of change. Goal of the reform is improvement of people living in spite of facing resisting and obstructing.

Minister Bui Quang Vinh agreed with viewpoint of Mr. Tony Blair on challenges of reform but also affirmed that it is essential innovation. At the Workshop, the economists discussed, questioned and listened the answers from the former British PM./.

Nguyen Huong

MPI Portal