Under this project, researchers and policy makers from Vietnam, neighboring Southeast Asian countries and Japan drafted basic policy guidelines for reforming state enterprises in Vietnam and submitted them to the Vietnamese government's Enterprise Reform Committee (ERC).
In FY 1995, the first year of the project, a working group led by the ERC identified and elucidated key issues relating to Vietnamese policies on privatization and other reforms of state-owned and private enterprises. Meanwhile, researchers from Japan and Southeast Asia compiled a report on privatization in the countries of East Asia. At a workshop held in Singapore in early September 1995, experts from Vietnam and East Asia made further deliberations on the findings of this study, and finalized their policy recommendations report on reforming state-owned enterprises in Vietnam.
The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies published the report in November 1996. The report was then translated into Vietnamese and reissued by the ERC in December. Also in December, an international conference was held in Hanoi to disseminate the results of the project.
Drawing on the experiences of Japan and other Southeast Asian countries, this project made a significant contribution to the ERC's efforts to formulate rigorously thought-out reform policies for Vietnamese business. It also helped foster networking among the Vietnamese, Japanese and Southeast Asian scholars, policy-makers and businessmen who took part.