A Hapro retail store in Quang Ninh Province (Source: VNA)
Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Issues related to land use right continue to pose obstaclesto the State-owned enterprises' process of evaluating the businessesand share prices and executing their equitisation plans, experts said at ameeting on August 8.
According to theMinistry of Finance, 35 of total 127 State-owned enterprises (SOEs) targeted byDecision 991, which was issued by the Prime Minister in July 2017, haveexecuted their equitisation plans for the 2017-20 period.
At the same time, 88of 403 SOEs have sold the required State stakes in their capital in accordancewith the Prime Minister’s Decision 1232 issued August 2017.
At this pace,Government agencies and SOEs have lagged behind the schedule and land use isblamed for the failure.
For example, 20 SOEshave failed to execute their equitisation plans in the last two years thoughthey were assisted in carrying out evaluation reports, Phan Van Ha, generaldirector of the Vietnam Valuation IVC JSC, said.
Conflicts andoverlaps among legal documents on land use right certificates are the cause ofdelayed equitisation plans, she said. For example, SOEs need to acquireprovincial confirmation of their land use before finalising equitisation plans.
However, the processmay take months and often exceeds the regulated time period for SOEequitisation, so both SOEs and evaluators must re-do the reports, she said.
In some cases, landuse right certificates are not counted into the firms’ evaluations, making itmore difficult for Ha’s company to evaluate the businesses.
According to Dr NgoTri Long, former director of the Ministry of Finance’s Price and MarketResearch Institute, land use right is among the decisive factors thatmake SOEs valuable to investors, especially local ones.
If the issues relatedto land use right are not resolved soon, SOEs’ equitisation plans will bedelayed and it could mean more losses for the State budget, he said.
To resolve landissues, the Vietnam Valuation and Financial Services JSC’s general director Vu AnKhang suggested the Government remove the rule on evaluating the firm’s annualland lease fee to make regulations comply with each other.
In addition, theGovernment must issue rules to evaluate land areas whether they are located inmore expensive areas or not, so that the State would not suffer losses, hesaid.-VNS/VNA
