Since the last two decades, the Government of Viet Nam undertook remarkable efforts to reform its business environment. The country is among the world’s fastest-growing economies and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are considered key actors in Viet Nam’s socio-economic development.

As one of Viet Nam’s development partners, UNIDO has been working actively for already many years to support SME development initiatives undertaken by the country. UNIDO assistance covered various complementary and consecutive large-scale projects operating both at the central and provincial levels with funding from different donors.

This publication constitutes a situation analysis of the business registration reforms in Viet Nam and UNIDO’s assistance in this field within the context of the country’s initiatives for wider administrative and business environment reforms.

With funding from Norway, Switzerland, UNIDO’s own resources and the One UN Fund and building on prior policy advice, UNIDO assistance covers a comprehensive support package to assist Viet Nam in making the registration of businesses less cumbersome, less costly and thus more efficient. The initiative addresses obstacles faced by entrepreneurs in completing business, tax, statistics and seal registration requirements. It includes assistance to policy makers in the implementation of the Enterprise Law (2005) and in the preparation of subsequent policy decisions and legislation to simplify and standardize registration procedures and steps. Such reforms are not a simple stroke of the pen of the decision makers, and involve both legal and administrative changes that take time.

This report summarizes the results of a study on energy and resource efficiency in the Electric Arc
Furnace (EAF) section of the Vietnamese steel industry, which was initiated by UNIDO with the support of the Vietnamese Steel Association. The mission was conducted in two Stages with one international and one national consultant. The first Stage included visits to six steel plants in early December 2010. The six plants, all based on EAF steelmaking, were chosen to provide a good cross-section of the industry with respect to geography, state and private ownership, age of facilities, scale of production and the level of technology. Preliminary findings were presented to a UNIDO-VSA Workshop in Ho Chi Minh City (10 December). In the second Stage, the analysis was extended to include the remaining EAF plants based on visits to twelve plants during April and May 2011.

Data on the main inputs and outputs of steelmaking, casting and rolling were collected in a systematic way to calculate the energy used in production and to analyse factors such as technology, productivity, process stability, resource efficiency and scrap quality. The analysis included a broader Life Cycle view of energy efficiency as well as calculations of greenhouse gas emissions. Insights were able to be drawn by comparing performance between the Vietnamese plants and also by reference to global good practice standards.

Viet Nam’s efforts to shift from a centrally planned to a market-led economy are paying off. Not only has Viet Nam been one of the fastest growing economies over the last 20 years, but growth has sharply reduced the incidence of poverty. Viet Nam is increasingly integrated into the global economy and is becoming a hub for potential investors nationally and internationally.

But how much has industrialization contributed to Viet Nam’s economic growth and export success? And what is the role of manufacturing and structural change in the country’s economic future? This report makes the case that industrialization is at the core of Viet Nam’s economic growth. It argues that Viet Nam needs an industrial policy aimed at structural change towards high value added manufacturing sectors to sustain current growth levels in the long run.

The report uses UNIDO’s methodology to assess national industrial performance through a series of industry-related dimensions, indicators and indices. This methodology is the fruit of years of research and advisory work carried out under the guidance of the late Professor Sanjaya Lall of Oxford University.

In recent years, the Vietnamese Government has focused on tapping women’s potential by improving the regulatory business environment and implementing the Law on Gender Equality, Law on Investment and Law on Enterprises as well as other decrees in support of female entrepreneurship. The aim of reforms is to level the playing field in order to draw on female entrepreneurship as an engine of economic growth and social development.   However, women entrepreneurs in Viet Nam live under two social settings: traditional values  that support the subordination of women and socialist ideals of the equality of citizens before the law. How do women entrepreneurs perceive the impact of policy reforms and prevailing traditions on their entrepreneurial situation? And what are the implications for policy makers and private sector associations? This report analyzes the traditional, regulatory, and internal gender-based obstacles that influence Vietnamese women entrepreneurs in starting and running their businesses and provides policy implications for promoting women’s entrepreneurship and gender equality in Viet Nam.

Understanding the impact of foreign direct investment on industrial development

The UNIDO Industry Investor Survey 2011 and the resulting Viet Nam Industrial Investment Report 2011 constitute an integral part of the first output of the project ‘Platform for Investment Monitoring and Supplier Development Phase I’. These outputs have sought to unearth important aspects of the investment impact of FDI in Viet Nam’s industry. They reveal an industrial sector which is striving to succeed in increasingly competitive global markets. The unprecedented inflows of FDI have had a positive impact on the economy in terms of growth in employment, exports, injection of capital and technology and the attainment of certain spillover effects. Simultaneously, however, increased FDI performance has also magnified the inherent structural economic challenges faced by the Vietnamese economy. The underlying fundamentals of an industrial sector based on labour-intensive, capital and material imports point to a need for a reassessment of the FDI-led export growth model as well as to a heightened urgency to move the country up the industrial upgrading ladder.