The Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Vietnam Institute for Development Strategies and the Konrad-Adenaeur-Stiftung Vietnam (KAS Vietnam) released research on August 31 assessing the top 500 largest Vietnamese private enterprises (VPE500) in 2021; when the country’s economy was hit hard by Covid-19.

The VPE500 shows that as of December 31, 2021, Vietnam had 694,200 private enterprises, accounting for 96.6 per cent of all active enterprises in the country. These employed 58.1 per cent of the workforce and represented 57.8 per cent of total net revenue.

The majority of these private enterprises were established after the “Doi moi” (Renewal) period began in Vietnam and are of small and medium size.

As of the end of 2021, only 0.22 per cent of private enterprises employed 500 workers or more, lower than the 8.29 per cent of foreign enterprises and 19.52 per cent of State-owned enterprises doing likewise.

“Vietnamese private enterprises have continually grown over the years, but there are few of large-scale or that are internationally recognized,” said Dr. Tran Toan Thang from the Vietnam Institute for Development Strategies. “Vietnamese brands are still worth less than brands from many countries in Southeast Asia.”

The research indicated that there was a significant change in the number of businesses joining and leaving the VPE500 during the two years of Covid-19, 2020-2021, and in the year prior.

A total of 158 enterprises, or 31.6 per cent, of enterprises in the VPE500 released at the end of 2019 did not appear in the VPE500 released in 2020 and 2021.