Vinacomin continues to delay restructuring

March 03, 2014 | 14:28

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Vinacomin chairman Tran Xuan Hoa at a conference in Hanoi on the restructuring of state-owned enterprises said one of the biggest challenges to the company’s equitisation would be resultant massive layoffs.

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“Vinacomin’s restructuring would result in 30,000 workers being made redundant,” Hoa explained.

He added that severance packages for these workers could get as high as VND10 trillion ($476.2 million), a number the group couldn’t afford amid a difficult economic climate.

According to the National Steering Committee for Enterprise Reform and Development (NSCERD), Vinacomin is listed in the group of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with the slowest equitisation progress. It has not yet carried out a single IPO of the eight it was supposed to complete in the 2012-2015 period.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has instructed Hoa to ensure the company steps up its reform efforts.

Of the eight Vinacomin companies set to be equitised, the company holds a greater than 51 per cent stake in seven of them. The exception is Vinacomin-Ship Building Mechanical Company in which it holds a 50 per cent stake.

The companies have not even published their equitisation plans and they have less than a year to carry out the restructuring if they are to follow the prime minister’s roadmap.

Two of the companies, Vinacomin-Material, Transport and Stevedoring Company Limited and Thai Nguyen nonferrous Metal Company, were supposed to be restructured into joint stock companies on January 1 this year. Obviously this didn’t happen.

The NSCERD said Vinacomin’s equitisation was highly important to the overall national restructuring plan that aimed to transform 432 SOEs by 2015.

By By Tan Van

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