Vietnam legislature reviews shipbuilder scandal

Vietnam’s communist legislature prepared Wednesday to examine the “serious” case of state-run shipping group Vinashin, which was driven to the brink of bankruptcy, government leaders said.

“The National Assembly will examine the Vinashin affair,” Nguyen Phu Trong, president of the legislature, said at the opening of a five-week session.

He added that Vinashin was among the “important questions” that assembly members would tackle.

Legislators are holding their final session before the country’s five-yearly Communist Party Congress in January, when top leadership posts are determined.

Observers say the Vinashin case highlights a lack of oversight and easy access to capital by large, inefficient state business groups.

“It’s a serious matter due to weaknesses of economic management, a lack of responsibility, and intentional violations of the rules of the state in economic management,” prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung said in an address to the Assembly.

Top executives of major state groups including Vinashin are appointed by the prime minister.

“The government saw its responsibility in this matter, as well as ministries and sectors concerned,” Dung said. “The government seriously undertook self-criticism, defined the causes and took necessary measures to settle this matter.”

Dung signed an order earlier this month appointing Nguyen Ngoc Su, formerly deputy head of state-owned oil and gas giant PetroVietnam, to head the shipbuilder.

He replaces Pham Thanh Binh, who was suspended in July and later arrested due to the group’s debts, which local media said amounted to at least 80 trillion dong (4.3 billion dollars).

Other senior managers were also told to step aside to allow a probe of the company’s operations.

The scandal forced the government to publicly reaffirm its support for the company and announce a vast restructuring of the group, whose interests included ports and real estate as well as shipbuilding.

A Vinashin subsidiary conducted maintenance on a US Navy logistics ship — the first such work in Vietnam since the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the government announced in February.

Although more than 90 percent of the nearly 500 National Assembly deputies are Communist Party members, they have in recent years become more vocal over the country’s major problems. – AFP

Tags: Vietnam Shipbuilding industry, Vinashin