FECON’s Chairman: Government Creating Positive Energy for Business Environment

As a business leader, how do you assess the Government’s actions to fulfil its commitments to supporting businesses and shifting from an administering government to a serving government in the past year? In my opinion, policies of the new Government have produced positive impacts on the spirit of enterprises and created a new positive and energetic atmosphere. However, the enforcement of these policies has not produced as good outcomes as expected by the business community. Authorities from the central to local levels have not actually changed enough to have new bureaucratic attitudes and actions in spite of efforts made. For that reason, businesses are still working very, very hard. The Law on Small and Medium Enterprises was much-awaited in 2016 – the most practical supporting tool for the SME community and especially start-ups, but the law has not been enacted. Therefore, SMEs are yet to receive specific policy supports.

How does the synergy of policies of the new Government affect FECON’s activities? Emotionally, I think that it’s very good! The new Government has shown its determination to take action, create an enabling environment for business and develop the country in a sustainable way. The Prime Minister has frequently requested all ministries, branches and all tiers of government to access modern governance practices, apply advanced technologies to improve economic productivity and quality and better serve businesses and people. These will have positive impacts on the economy in general and businesses in particular, including FECON. Since our inception, we have always aimed at sustainable business development driven by science, technology and people. In the light of the new vision and determination of the Government, we seem to have our belief in the chosen path further reinforced. With the resolution to shift from an administering government to a serving government, administrative procedures have been gradually reduced, helping businesses and investors, including FECON, to apply for project investment permits or new business start-up in a more favourable and economical manner than earlier. But, we still hope for more improvements, particularly in big cities.

The year 2016 marked a remarkable progress of FECON, including positive achievement in Myanmar. Could you please briefly talk about this achievement as well as the company’s vision to approach foreign markets? With a vision of becoming a leading infrastructure developer in Vietnam by 2020, FECON is aiming to expand its market to developing countries in the region such as Myanmar, Indonesia, Cambodia or Bangladesh to uphold its strong points and make use of its experience and partnership networks built up during more than 13 years of development. Making inroads into Myanmar is one of our achievements after many years of cooperation with Japanese partners. Our move is aimed to catch the flow of Japanese ODA channelled into infrastructure projects in this market. The initial success of FECON Rainbow Company in expansion of Thilawa Port (Yangoon) in 2016 built a good foundation for us to further penetrate into Myanmar - a potential but somewhat risky market. In the future, FECON Rainbow will continue to approach projects in Singapore, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Cambodia. As for Singapore where Vietnamese businesses feel it hard to access, making inroads into this difficult market in the name of a Myanmar company is much easier. As for Bangladesh - a market long dominated by China and India, the partnership with Japanese partners will help FECON with more opportunities of infrastructure projects here.

FECON's project in Thilawa, Myanma

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc once said that businesses need to build a corporate culture because it is the soul, the differing factor of sustainable corporate. As far as I am concerned, FECON has a distinctive, responsible and professional culture. Would you talk more about this? Every business has its own culture. But, to have a distinctively different but sustainable culture, it must have a strong determination and persistence of the leadership and the staff. In my opinion, the distinctive and deep corporate culture will create close unity and cohesion within the enterprise and create creditability in the social community. For FECON, since our inception, we have been building our company on three foundations: facility, knowledge and corporate culture. Building FECON corporate culture is building the image of a company that, once referred to, people will immediately think of its full responsibility and high professionalism. FECON is an infrastructure company whose work is heavy, sweaty and pressuring. Without a glue to fasten them, here we called the corporate culture, it is difficult to have unity, unanimity and synergy of all employees. In addition, the corporate culture positively influences the spirit and passion of employees. Whether a company can retain its talented and dedicated employees depends on whether its corporate culture interests them or not. We believe that building a good corporate culture means contributing a good business to the society. With many good businesses, it is certain that we can shape a sustainable economy and a prosperous society.

In 2017, the Vietnamese business community expects on the Government’s further endeavours and resolves to create new growth momentums for the economy. Given its foundation, how do you assess FECON’s development prospects for 2017? Every business must build its own medium and long-term development strategies. And one of input criteria for us to define strategies is the business environment. In my point of view, with the endeavour and resolve of the Government for business, the business environment will be more and more favourable and open. Therefore, we can totally believe that our business strategies will be further promoted in a positive manner. Driven by current extensive integration into the international economy, FECON in particular and Vietnamese enterprises as a whole are facing enormous challenges, especially competition with foreign rivals. In the coming years, we will further accelerate the application of advanced science and technology, improve governance, increase labour productivity, reduce production costs, and selectively pick up investment projects, with priority given to those demanding high quality, having high technological content, having good repayment, and specially leaving no negative impacts on the environment. FECON expects that the Government, in addition to its efforts to change macroeconomic policies, will take more specific actions to support businesses, particularly SMEs such as FECON, to develop strongly.