The real proportion is probably higher.Just as there has been a lot of talk about how to reform the SOEs, so there has been plenty of discussion about how to tackle corruption but little action.
"We've been low-profile, and coexisted peacefully with the SOEs, so we haven't gotten any trouble.
Latency arbitragers, like the SOES bandits before them, sought to scoop up price differences resulting from momentary time lags between exchanges.
Yet the SOEs remain inefficient; some are so saddled with debts that they cannot afford to pay their employees.None of this bodes well for the hundreds of thousands of young people wading into Vietnam's anaemic job market, much less those who are fed up with corruption and rising inequality.
In 2011 one of the biggest SOEs, the shipbuilder Vinashin, nearly collapsed altogether.More damagingly, however, the SOEs' operations appear to be sullied by corruption, and that has undermined the authority of a party founded by the ascetic Ho Chi Minh.
Of the total owed by the SOEs, 200tr VND is considered bad debt.
But in recent years, the retreat of the SOEs has ground to a halt (see chart 3).Not even the DRC envisages outright privatisation of the SOEs.
Barriers to competition allow the SOEs to overcharge consumers for their products.
The problems of the SOEs explain much of Vietnam's weakening macroeconomic outlook.
Long-term and ambitious, the SOEs increasingly attract the country's best graduates.
Quite simply, the SOEs' numbers are whatever the key man wants them to be.
