The Centre for Social Initiatives Promotion (CSIP), the British Council (BC) and the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) recently co-organised the Social Investment Forum 2013 with the theme of “Vietnam – Emerging market for social investment” in Hanoi. The event helps investors understand more about the social investment environment in Vietnam and connect social enterprises in Vietnam with advisors, investors, and other important networks to promote collaboration, share resources, and connect goodwill investment.
According to statistical reports released at the forum, about 28 percent of Vietnam’s population are in need of support, including poor households, near-poor households, people with disabilities, children with special circumstances, people released from prison, people living with HIV/AIDS, and the elderly. Besides, there are a series of other social issues like social violence, overloaded and unreasonable education and health systems, food safety, waste disposal, air pollution, energy conservation and cultural preservation. To achieve sustainable development, Vietnam must solve both issues at the same time: economic growth and social issues.
Speaking at the forum, Dr Vu Tien Loc, President of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), said: In the past few years, social enterprises are seen as effective partners for Vietnam to implement social goals. However, Vietnam now does not have a regulatory framework and a suitable encouragement policy system to expand investment activities of social enterprises. He added that Vietnam needs social resources and to form social funds for this type of enterprises. He also recommended communication to connect investment channels of social enterprises. Besides, part of the Investment Fund for Small and Medium Enterprises will be switched for social enterprises.
CSIP Director Pham Kieu Oanh said most enterprises need to raise more and more funds, but social enterprises in Vietnam are now mostly young with small capital, mainly paid-in capital contributed by their founding members. The accessibility to commercial investment sources, even start-up capital or capital for production and business development, is limited. Current investments are merely capital-seeding investments aimed at inspiring innovative ideas and capacity building, rather than investment capital for business development.
Not only that, social enterprises in Vietnam now face challenges relating to human resources: Low quality, instability and low labour productivity of human resources; investment costs for human resources higher than average; and difficulty in recruitment.
However, with its conditions, and strong resources, Vietnam has many favourable conditions for social enterprise development as well as has a good market for social investment. This is first represented by the increasing dynamism of Vietnamese students. It is clear that more intern students and volunteers are working for NGOs and social enterprises, let alone overseas students who have updated knowledge of the world. This will be the source of community leaders for social enterprises in the future.
In addition, the social capital and non-profit market is perhaps abundant both domestically and internationally. As for attracting social investment capital from foreign institutions, the decisive factors lie in the capital absorb-ability and prestige of domestic social enterprises. In fact, some social enterprises are very good at attracting and managing international funds, typically Hoa Sua School and KOTO Restaurant.
In addition to external broad capital markets, domestic non-profit capital also has potential. Once having the capacity and credibility in social projects, many charitable organisations and projects in the country have attracted a lot of funds.
Specially, social enterprises can grasp opportunities from policy framework and laws on foreign investment attraction (direct and indirect), economic integration policies, bilateral agreements, and market economy. State preferential and incentive policies for cooperatives, non-public agencies, public utility enterprises, non-profit organs, and scientific and technological organisations have facilitated the operation of these entities and social enterprises (in the case of conversion). Furthermore, Vietnam’s infrastructure has also been improved. In addition, with respect to natural conditions, being the intersection of Southeast Asia, Vietnam provides favourable conditions for social enterprises to exchange and connect with social enterprises and intermediary social enterprise promotion organisations throughout the region.
In another aspect, the cognitive change is also expressed in public administrative reform. The government encourages non-profit public units to operate in the form of an enterprise and public scientific and technological organisations to transform into scientific and technological enterprises, while opening the public utilities market for the private sector and non-public sector and adopting competitive bidding model in public utilities projects to achieve better efficiency. This shows that the government has agreed with market-based tendencies in exercising its social functions.
Social enterprises are effective partners of the State and help the State accomplish social goals.
Online maps and directories of Vietnamese social enterprises have been put into use since 2011. Nearly 200 social entrepreneurs have been identified, and about 165,000 organisations may be able to become social enterprises. For more information about social enterprises and directory of social enterprises, please visit http://doanhnghiepxahoivn.net/
Thu Ha
Đăng ký: VietNam News
