Prime Minister Urges State-Owned Enterprises to Take the Lead in Six Key Sectors

On March 21, 2025, the Prime Minister issued Directive No. 09/CT-TTg, outlining tasks and solutions for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to drive double-digit economic growth toward rapid and sustainable development. The directive underscores the pioneering role of SOEs in six key sectors while instructing ministries, agencies, and localities to streamline organizational structures to enhance the efficiency of SOEs.

Amidst rapidly evolving, complex, and unpredictable regional and global developments, SOEs are seen as a crucial tool for ensuring macroeconomic stability, responding to market fluctuations, curbing inflation, maintaining national defense and security, and implementing social welfare policies. State corporations and general corporations play a core role in vital economic sectors, meeting consumer demands, supplying essential goods to the public, supporting national economic development, and ensuring security and defense—particularly energy security. They are also responsible for balancing major economic sectors and providing essential products and services such as electricity, coal, petroleum, and basic chemicals.

Six Key Sectors Where SOEs Must Lead

To fulfill this role, the Prime Minister has directed SOEs to take the lead in six key areas:

1. Leading in innovation, digital transformation, and the development and application of science and technology, in alignment with Resolution No. 57-NQ/TW, issued by the Politburo on December 22, 2024.

2. Leading in making significant and effective contributions to the three strategic breakthroughs, particularly institutional reform, as regulatory bottlenecks remain a major constraint on economic development.

3. Leading in accelerating growth and making substantial contributions to rapid, inclusive, and sustainable national development.

4. Leading in the development of the digital economy, green economy, circular economy, sharing economy, and knowledge economy, as well as in investment in research and development.

5. Leading in actively participating in social and welfare policies, ensuring fairness and progress, and leaving no one behind in the country’s development process, particularly in social housing programs and efforts to eliminate substandard and dilapidated housing nationwide.

6. Leading in creating Vietnamese-branded goods and products, integrating into global supply and value chains, enhancing national brand value, elevating the value of the country’s products, and positioning Vietnam as a key player in global value chains.

Strengthening SOEs Through Innovation, Policy Reforms, and Strategic Investments

SOEs must continue to foster innovation, shift their mindset, and transform their operational methods. At the same time, they should take a proactive role in reviewing and compiling challenges, obstacles, and inadequacies arising from practical implementation. Based on these findings, SOEs should propose appropriate solutions and recommend amendments, supplements, and institutional improvements to the competent authorities to create a favorable environment for sustainable development.

Additionally, SOEs must enhance research and the transfer of advanced technologies to improve labor productivity, actively apply innovation, smart management, and digital transformation. Notably, enterprises should prioritize investment in infrastructure development, focusing on key projects with widespread impact to serve as catalysts for economic and social development.

The Prime Minister also emphasized the importance of reforming human resource management in SOEs, including efficient recruitment and utilization of human capital, training a high-quality workforce, and attracting as well as retaining top talent.

Furthermore, the Prime Minister assigned ministries, sectors, management agencies, provincial and municipal People's Committees, and state ownership representative agencies the task of actively listening to and addressing feedback from businesses and the public. They must promptly compile and resolve real-world difficulties, while ministries and sectors should urgently handle or propose solutions to the competent authorities, particularly in the areas of mechanisms and policies, under the principle of the "five clarities: clear responsibility, clear tasks, clear accountability, clear deadlines, and clear results”.

The directive also calls for decisive and effective implementation of organizational streamlining within the political system, ensuring both quality and timely execution as planned. Additionally, there is a need to swiftly improve institutional frameworks to enhance the efficiency of administrative agencies from the central to local levels in accordance with Resolution No. 18. This aims to strengthen state management capacity over the business sector, including SOEs.

The Prime Minister further urged the design and implementation of macroeconomic policies to maintain political stability, social order, and security, thereby fostering an environment conducive to the growth of SOEs and other economic sectors. Moreover, maintaining macroeconomic stability, controlling inflation, promoting growth, and ensuring major economic balances are crucial tasks to achieve fast and sustainable development.

Additionally, there is a need to review, amend, and refine regulations concerning public-private partnership (PPP) investments. At the same time, mechanisms and policies that act as "leverage and support points" should be proposed to maximize business resources, enabling SOEs in particular and the broader business sector to develop robustly and achieve breakthroughs in the near future.