Data Description
The data in this paper are drawn from a census of registered enterprises collected by the Vietnamese
General Statistics Office (GSO) in 2001-2004 covering all 64 provinces. Each firm has a unique tax
code which enables us to follow the same enterprise over time even if they change location, sector
or legal ownership type. The census collects detailed data in all production sectors for non-
household enterprises (registered at the province level), including agricultural (primary),
manufacturing and industry (secondary), and service sector (tertiary) firms.30 Agricultural
cooperatives and the forestry sector are excluded. However, in this paper we focus exclusively on
the manufacturing sector (ISIC 15 - ISIC 37).
Enterprises with a business license and a tax code which are not operating and firms which merge
with another enterprise are excluded. Business units that do not keep independent business records,
such as branches, are assigned to the enterprise headquarter. If an enterprise is engaged in different
production activities, the main sector is defined as the one which generates the largest share of total
gross revenue. The different production activities are documented at the 4-digit ISIC level (6-digit
in 2004).
The definition of legal ownership form changed between the census years. We use the following
eleven ownership categories based on the Census information: 1) Central state owned enterprise, 2)
Local state owned enterprise, 3) Joint stock with state involvement, 4) Cooperative or collective
company, 5) Private enterprise, 6) Partnership, 7) Private limited liability company, 8) Joint stock
without State, 9) 100 percent foreign owned enterprise, 10) Joint venture (state owned and foreign
enterprises), 11) Joint venture (Non-state and foreign enterprises). The share of state/private/foreign
involvement is not well documented in all census years for categories 3), 10) and 11). Using the
scarce information on ownership shares available we decided in this paper to classify 1-3 as state
owned enterprises, 4-8 as private enterprises and 9-11 as enterprises with foreign involvement. The
30 Household establishments (registered at the district level) are a dominant part of the Vietnamese business
environment (in terms of numbers), but are not covered in this Enterprise Census. According to the 2002 Establishment
Census (GSO, 2004), enterprises registered at the provincial level (enterprises covered by the data used in this paper)
accounted for 2.1 percent of all business establishments in 2002, meaning that over 2.5 million household businesses
are operating in Vietnam. Despite representing a small proportion of the total number of establishments, the enterprises
covered by the account for most of the registered turnover by Vietnamese establishments (97 percent GSO (2004)). We
acknowledge that household businesses operate relatively more informally, which will bias the reported turnover
estimate downwards. Nevertheless, the firms covered in this paper still account for a very large proportion of the total
production in the Vietnamese economy.
48