The dignity of the business community

Businesspeople always understand that, in a healthy competitive market, the value of material assets accumulated within a business is not immutable.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh exchanges views with businesses - Photo: DOAN BAC

During a meeting on February 10th with several leading private business leaders to discuss solutions to boost economic growth, the Prime Minister urged businesses to consider participating in major national projects, demonstrating a particularly strong emphasis on the role of the private sector in the country's "era of progress."

In reality, the contribution of the non-state business sector to the economy has remained at around 50% since 2010. Does this mean that Vietnamese private businesses "refuse to grow," as many economic experts have stated?

Businesspeople always understand that, in a healthy competitive market, the value of material assets accumulated within a business is not immutable.

An entrepreneur lacking sufficient ethics, intelligence, and courage will find it difficult to attract talented personnel, foster innovation, persuade others to invest, and partner with them.

In that case, the value of the physical assets accumulated within the business could become zero, even if they were previously valued at billions of dollars.

Therefore, the reason why Vietnam's private sector hasn't grown significantly over the years isn't because they don't want to grow, but because they're like heroes without a "place to showcase their talents."

The best plots of land seem to have been reserved for state-owned enterprises and foreign-invested businesses. They have to compete on barren land and navigate the tangled web of institutional constraints.

For a long time, Party and State leaders have often said that institutional reform is the "breakthrough of breakthroughs" because the current system is the "bottleneck of bottlenecks". But the question is: where does this breakthrough begin?

This represents a radical shift in perception regarding the dignity of entrepreneurs in a market economy.

Generating profits and expanding the scale of a business's assets is the hallmark of an entrepreneur, demonstrating their skill and success in the marketplace. This is the role of an entrepreneur in society.

In the process of steering a business to seek profits and expand assets, entrepreneurs are very likely to fall into "traps" that lead to them being accused and suspected of being greedy, selfish, opportunistic, or exploitative.

The role of the State is precisely to build a healthy and fair competitive market mechanism for entrepreneurs in order to dispel all those doubts.

That should be the ultimate goal of this institutional reform: building a legal system, a rule of law state, aimed at establishing and protecting a fair and competitive market economy and eliminating any doubts about the dignity of entrepreneurs.

Only in this way will state agencies dare to open up the "territories" that have long been reserved for the state-owned enterprise sector and foreign investment to Vietnamese entrepreneurs, as well as remove the "jungle of regulations" surrounding them.

At that time, Vietnamese entrepreneurs, without needing any slogans, will, with their inherent dignity, automatically contribute all their intelligence, experience, and passion to compete in order to create increasingly valuable products to serve the needs of people at home and around the world .

Corporate profits and asset size will automatically increase when they become respected metrics in society. High economic growth for the entire economy will also naturally follow.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/pham-gia-cua-gioi-doanh-nhan-20250212084418127.htm