SOE restructuring: Converting quantity into quality

As the restructuring of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) is one of the priorities of the government, the Prime Minister has issued Decision No. 22/2021/QD-TTg, which stimulates the speed of SOE restructuring by promulgating classification criteria and emphasizing decentralization. It is expected that some 1,500 SOEs will be restructured to 2025. Vietnam should take note of China’s approach to such restructuring, towards “grasping the large, letting go of the small”. The reason for this is the similarities in governance, with Vietnam’s Commission for the Management of State Capital at Enterprises (CMSC) and State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC) being similar to China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC). SOE restructuring in China has been quite successful in recent times thanks to the application of core strategies, including the merging of large enterprises into corporations.