A comprehensive research backed by a Danish development agency has presented nothing but a bleak picture of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Việt Nam.
The findings of a survey targeting SMEs across Việt Nam sponsored by the Danish International Development Agency were released during a two-day conference jointly organized by Việt Nam’s Central Institute of Economic Management (CIEM) and the University of Copenhagen on Monday and Tuesday in Hà Nội.
The fifth biennial Business Sector Research was conducted last year by the CIEM, Việt Nam’s Institute of Labor Studies and Social Affairs, the General Statistics Office of Việt Nam, and the Department of Economics of the University of Copenhagen, with support from the Danish Embassy in Hà Nội, according to the embassy’s website.
An employee at a small-sized pen-making company in Hồ Chí Minh City
Speaking at the event, Professor Finn Tarp from the University of Copenhagen said the research did not show a rosy picture of the SME sector in Việt Nam.
Around 70 percent of the respondents said the global economic recession still had an adverse impact on business conditions in 2013, while only 15 percent said they did not see any effect of the financial crisis of 2007-2008, according to the research.
Researchers directly interviewed nearly 2,500 SMEs in ten localities – including Hà Nội, Hải Phòng, Hồ Chí Minh City, Hà Tây (now merged with Hà Nội), Phú Thọ, Nghệ An, Quảng Nam, Khánh Hòa, Lâm Đồng, and Long An – in June, July, and August 2013.
As many as 84 percent of the SMEs polled said they faced challenges in accessing capital or were hurt by fierce competition.
These difficulties have prevented businesses from expanding their scale, the survey said.
Some 94 percent of the firms classified as ‘very small businesses’ in the 2011 research failed to upgrade to the medium-size category in the 2013 edition, according to the research.
Twenty-five percent of the businesses surveyed were operating at a smaller scale in 2013 than in 2011, while 18 percent of the respondents in the 2011 research have gone bankrupt.
The research also found that more SMEs had to pay bribes, with 45 percent saying they were forced to do so last year.
As many as 38.5 percent of those claiming in the 2011 survey they did not bribe admitted they did when surveyed again last year.
Nineteen percent said they had to pay ‘unofficial fees’ to deal with tax authorities.
The respondents told researchers that the bribery helped them complete paperwork, acquire licenses, and win contracts with state-run firms more quickly.
The picture of the Vietnamese SME sector in 2013 was much gloomier than it was in 2011 as the financial crisis lingered, Đầu tư Chứng khoán (Stock Investment) newspaper quoted researchers as saying.
The Business Sector Research reflects the basic structural challenges, which need to be solved by a series of new policies and a new development strategy so that the SME sector can be revitalized, according to the researchers.
Source: Tuổi Trẻ News
VIETNAM GLOBAL NETWORK 