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2012 remains challenging for businesses
The year 2011 is coming to an end, but businesses still dare not set up any goals for 2012 because they anticipate big difficulties ahead.
Businesses should have drawn up their business plans for 2012 some months ago, but to date, the frames of the plans have not taken shape yet. The 2012 business plan of FPT (Financing and Promoting Technology Corporation) was first discussed in mid November.
However, a lot of issues have been left undecided. The ambitious target of the board of directors of obtaining the growth rate 30 percent proves to be a hard pleasure on all divisions of the group in the context of the big difficulties in the national economy. Not many big enterprises set up such a high goal for a huge apparatus.
A senior executive of FPT said that after analyzing advantages and disadvantages, FPT’s subsidiaries asked to give them more time to discuss the business plan. Another meeting to discuss the business plan of the whole economic group will be held in mid December. Only by that time will they be able to say if the 30 percent growth rate is achievable.
Truong Dinh Anh, general director of FPT said that in order to obtain the goals, FPT would concur with every business field it can.
Talking about the business plan for 2012, a senior executive of the Vietnam Construction and Import-Export Corporation (Vinaconex) said that the corporation is facing a lot of difficulties in 2012. Especially, it has to arrange enough capital to run projects, pay bank debts and make payment for the 2000 billion dong worth of mature bonds.
Vinaconex has invested in too many projects. The big investment projects of Vinaconex such as Cam Pha cement plan, Da River water plan which have been put into operation, have been running in unfavorable condition since the market demand is low. The business result of the two plans has been worse than expected.
Meanwhile, with the current gloomy real estate market, the huge project being carried out by Vinaconex such as Splendora or Tay Mo new urban area cannot bring turnover and profit in the near future.
Phan Minh Tuan, Deputy Director-general of DragonCapital said: “We many times emphasize that Vinaconex needs to restructure the Cam Pha cement plan or we will withdrawn our capital.” However, the restructuring has not been completed by the end of 2010. As the difficulties were bigger in 2011, the restructuring was not fulfilled in, so DragonCapital and other investors said goodbye to the project.
Vinaconex well understands that it needs to settle the consequences created by Cam Pha cement plan in 2012, so as to obtain the growth rate of 15 percent and pay the division to shareholders of 12-15 percent a year.
Even the enterprises with big advantages in export market and commodity like Minh Phu Seafood Group also dare not set up high business goal for 2012.
Le Van Diep, Deputy Director-general of Minh Phu said that the company now has to pay very high interest rate for the bonds (700 billion dong). The three-year term borrowing alone cost the company 140 billion dong in paying interests. Meanwhile, Minh Phu has to pay interest rate for many other short and long term loans.
The bond interest rates are floating. Therefore, the profit of the group would heavily depend on the factor. Besides, the operation of the group would also depend on the input material supplies.
The business circle last week received a lot of bad news. Standard & Poor's, a credit rating firm has lowered the credit rating of Hoang Anh Gia Lai group due to the difficulties in the group’s operation and liquidity.
Lower credit ratings have also given to three biggest Vietnamese banks: Vietcombank, BIDV and Techcombank
vietnamnet
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