List of strong state-owned enterprises and task assignment problem
(Dan Tri) - In 2026, the Ministry of Finance will submit to the Government a list that can reshape the landscape of the state-owned enterprise sector for many years to come: List of strong, large-scale state-owned enterprises.
The information was confirmed by Ms. Nguyen Thu Thuy, Deputy Director of the Department of State Enterprise Development (Ministry of Finance), at the seminar "What can state-owned enterprises really lead growth?" takes place at the end of July.
This is the task assigned in the Government's action program to implement Resolution No. 79 of the Politburo.
With the goal that by 2030, Vietnam will have from 1 to 3 state-owned enterprises in the group of 500 largest enterprises in the world. The most important question is not who is included in the list, but rather: what additional tasks will businesses named in the list be assigned, and what additional mechanisms will they be given?
Twitter determines the industry first, chooses the business later
With the goal that by 2030, Vietnam will have from 1 to 3 state-owned enterprises in the group of 500 largest enterprises in the world (Photo: Viettel).
The revenue threshold to enter Fortune's ranking of the world's 500 largest businesses is currently about 33.2 billion USD. With the assumption of average revenue growth of over 10% per year, a corporation that wants to realize the 2030 goal needs to have a revenue base of about 20 billion USD at the present time. EVN, with consolidated revenue in 2025 estimated at about 24.8 billion USD, has registered to participate in this goal.
At the regional level, the picture is more positive. Fortune's 2025 ranking of the 500 largest enterprises in Southeast Asia has 76 Vietnamese enterprises, up from 70 last year. Petrovietnam appears for the first time in 11th place and is the only representative of Vietnam in the group of 20 enterprises with the highest revenue. The threshold for entering the regional list is only about 349 million USD.
The gap between the two rankings is almost a hundred times in terms of revenue threshold. This shows that the goal of 50 businesses entering the regional 500 group is feasible, while the goal of 1-3 businesses entering the global 500 group is really difficult. And that difficult part cannot be solved by making a list. It requires sustained growth over many years, and speed comes from the mechanism.
Regarding criteria, Ms. Nguyen Thu Thuy said the list will refer to the standards of international rankings - revenue scale, total assets, equity - combined with development potential, market share and the level of business contribution to the industry.
The notable point lies in the sequence. The Ministry of Finance determines in advance the industries and fields in which the State needs to play a leading role, then selects suitable enterprises. According to her, a business that is not currently large in scale but operates in a strategic field and has potential can still be included in the investment orientation and develop into a strong enterprise.
This approach is reasonable in principle. If only ranked by current size, the list will only be a snapshot of the past, while the goal of Resolution 79 is oriented toward the future.
Attached is a resource problem. After 40 years of innovation, the number of enterprises with state capital has decreased to about 850, of which about 700 enterprises have over 50% of charter capital held by the State.
Particularly, 18 corporations and corporations with the Ministry of Finance as the owner's representative agency hold over 60% of the total capital and assets of the entire bloc. Such concentration is significant, but the number of 850 is still large compared to the practice of many countries because in some places there are only about 200 businesses.
What is the head of a train measured by?
Institutions must precede, or at least accompany, this process. This is the point where Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cung, former Director of the Central Institute for Economic Management Research, emphasized the most at the discussion.
He noted that the administrative choice does not always achieve the desired results, because the potential is difficult to be fully reflected through administrative criteria, while state management capacity is not the same as business capacity. The approach he proposed is simpler: choose businesses that have potential and have proven their capacity in practice.
But if you choose, you must have conditions - resources, and most importantly, institutions. "Institutions must come first or at least simultaneously," he said. Experts also warn that if the list is determined and then built a mechanism several years later, the requirements will not be met.
This is not a theoretical concern. The list of leading enterprises is expected to be submitted to the Government in 2026. Meanwhile, the bonus mechanism from profits exceeding the plan - one of the most mentioned outstanding mechanisms - is expected to be proposed in 2027. If other mechanisms follow the same pace, there will be a period of time when the enterprise is called a leader but still operates within the old framework.
But the most difficult question about categories is probably the question about metrics. How is a leading business evaluated?
Mr. Nguyen Dinh Cung raised the issue from the perspective of modern competition. Today, businesses no longer compete with businesses, but value chains compete with value chains. In every chain, there is always a leading enterprise leading the entire system of suppliers.
When foreign corporations invest in Vietnam, they bring their supply chains with them. The expectation that Vietnamese businesses will be pulled into that chain is legitimate, but their benefits are greater and they are not easy to share. Therefore, according to him, Vietnam must build its own chain, and state-owned enterprises must be able to do that.
He cited Viettel as evidence that it is possible. This does not come from scale, but because of the ability to form a value chain and lead an entire business system to develop together. From there, he suggested studying successful cases to draw selection criteria, instead of citing international experience in a general way.
Mr. Nguyen Tu Anh, Director of Policy Research at VinUni University, commented that state-owned enterprises in general hardly export, mainly exploit the domestic market, and even large financial institutions almost do not go abroad. According to him, the requirement after Resolution 79 is to move from a defensive posture to an offensive posture.
Unopened knots
However, it is here that a gap appears. If a business is determined to be a leader, the value it creates lies not only in its own revenue and profits, but also in the localization rate, order value for domestic businesses, and the number of small and medium-sized enterprises pulled into the supply chain. Those indicators are not currently included in the evaluation system.
Viettel is expected to have the ability to form a value chain and lead a whole business system to develop together (Photo: Viettel).
But what cannot be measured is difficult to prioritize. A locomotive that is only measured by its own results lacks the motivation to pull the whole team along. Thus, the leading role set by Resolution 79 will stop at expectations instead of becoming a quantifiable task.
Similar to the requirement to reach out to the international market. This is the direction that Resolution 79 encourages and is also what Dr. Nguyen Tu Anh emphasized when talking about attack posture. But as long as the level of foreign market penetration has not become an adequately weighted evaluation criterion, expanding abroad remains a riskier option than exploiting the domestic market.
According to Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cung, even businesses that have gone far still have items that could have gone further if there were no barriers. He believes that the actual evidence is already available, it is just a matter of research to identify it. If the strongest enterprise is still entangled, the rest of the region will be entangled much more severely.
Twitter Building a strong state-owned enterprise portfolio is a necessary step. It is impossible for a business to enter the world's 500 largest group if it is not clearly defined who will invest and where.
But the portfolio itself does not create capacity. If the business is named but the mechanism remains the same - still having to go through many layers of approval for each project, still being evaluated by a measure that does not fully reflect the contribution, still lacking the tools to compete in the international market - then the 4-year calculation mentioned at the beginning of the article will be very difficult to be feasible. Accompanying conditions should be prepared in parallel now, not waiting until the list is issued.