SMALL SIZE OF PRIVATE COMPANY IN VIETNAM
As the above table demonstrates, the size of private companies is particularly small relative to state owned and foreign invested companies. Likewise, the typical equitized joint stock company has average revenues which are approximately 5x larger than the revenues for a typical privately founded joint stock company. It is also interesting to note that the typical net profit margin declared in 2002 is significantly higher for state owned, equitised and foreign-invested companies than for private companies. However, we believe that the officially reported data is unlikely to be very reliable.

The vast majority of private companies in Vietnam are very small family level enterprises, such as shops, restaurants and service companies. Mekong Capital is currently aware of approximately 400 private manufacturing companies. Revenues for these companies are typically in the range of $1-8 million. Only a very small number of these companies seem to have annual revenues higher than $10 million.

The small average size of private companies in Vietnam is partially a reflection of the fact that the operation of large scale private sector enterprises was very difficult until the reforms of the 1990's and therefore many of the larger private companies in Vietnam were either established within the last 10 years or were extremely small prior to that. This differs from other Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines which had a long history of continuous private sector activity often dating back 40-100 years.

PRIVATE COMPANIES SHARE OF INDUSTRAIL PRODUCTION
According to official statistics, the private sector’s share of industrial production has remained stable at about 24% between 1995 and 2003. Meanwhile, the state sector’s share of industrial production dropped from 50% to 39% over that period, while the foreign invested sector’s share of industrial production increased from 25% to 36% over the same period.^[1]