500 biggest companies honoured in Hanoi

he ceremony to announce the top 500 Vietnamese companies in 2008 and the VNR500 forum ‘Big enterprises and the economic prospects in Vietnam in 2009’ took place on January 2, 2009 at the National Convention Centre in Hanoi.

VietNamNet's Editor-in-Chief Nguyen Anh Tuan delivered the opening speech

The ceremony attracted the participation of former Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan, Professor Robert Kaplan from Harvard Business School, Dr Dinh Van An, Head of the Central Institute of Economic Management (CIEM), Nguyen Dinh Cung, MA, also from CIEM, and representatives of hundreds of enterprises.

This is the second consecutive year VietNamNet newspaper and VietNam Report Company have joined forces to announce the top 500 Vietnamese companies: The leading businesses in Vietnam in terms of turnover and operation scale.

Speaking at the conference, Nguyen Anh Tuan, Editor-in-Chief of VietNamNet, stressed that despite having to face a lot of difficulties in 2008, Vietnamese enterprises still recorded encouraging achievements. Tuan said that the difficulties have urged businesses to improve themselves to become stronger and more adaptable in the process of global integration.

Professor Kaplan with his presentation

Professor Kaplan gave a presentation about the Balanced Scorecard model, of which he is the father. The Balanced Scorecard is considered one of the most effective business administration models in the 20^th century, and has been widely used by the world’s leading groups.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan said at the conference that honouring businesses is a good way to encourage them. “I find VND500 very necessary and significant,” Khoan said.

When asked if naming 500 enterprises was too much for a national economy in which small- and medium-size enterprises were the majority, Khoan said that naming 500 from among 360,000 operational businesses was not ‘too many’. However, Khoan said that the criteria for hounouring businesses should focus more on quality than scale.

Dinh Van An, Head of CIEM, while talking about difficulties Vietnamese businesses will face in 2009, identified six favourable conditions which he believes will help businesses overcome the difficulties.

An said that the macroeconomic management capability of the government has improved considerably. In 2008, the government several times made suitable adjustments of economic growth targets and launched suitable policies to help the economy overcome difficulties.

However, as Nguyen Dinh Cung pointed out, in order to survive the difficulties and become stronger, enterprises need to improve their corporate governance skills. Cung said that bad corporate governance is the main factor hindering the development of big enterprises in Vietnam.

Source: http://english.vietnamnet.vn