Vietnam's top 500 firms in 2015 named

State-run Viet Nam Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) remains at the top of the 500 Vietnamese biggest enterprises list in terms of revenue (VNR500) this year, while the Viet Nam Dairy Products Joint Stock Company (Vinamilk) has been named the country's largest private enterprise.

The Top 500 Largest Enterprises list from the Revenue Ranking Board follows the Fortune 500 model. It was released on Tuesday by the Viet Nam Report Company and online news site VietnamNet.

In the list, PetroVietnam was followed by Samsung, Viet Nam National Petroleum Group, Viet Nam Electricity, and Viettel Group.

Statistics from the report show that State-owned enterprises (SOEs) played an important role in the country's economy as they accounted for 57 per cent of revenue of the top 500 firms.

However, the number of SOEs on the list continued to decline slightly with 38.4 per cent in comparison with 40.8 per cent of last year.

In addition, the report says that the mineral and petroleum sector was ranked second with 14.4 per cent of enterprises, but leading in terms of revenue with 31.6 per cent of total revenue.

Meanwhile, the telecommunications and information technology sectors had an unchanged number of enterprises on the list of about 4.4 per cent. The sector created 7.7 per cent of the total revenue, a small increase compared with 7.1 per cent of last year.

This year, northern Bac Ninh Province continued to hold the third position after Ha Noi and HCM City on the list of five cities and provinces with the most contribution to total revenue. Others were Dong Nai and Binh Duong provinces.

Excluding Ha Noi, other provinces had total export revenue exceeding US$10 billion each in the first 10 months of 2015.

VNR's survey also revealed that the top 500 firms showed optimism about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and said it would bring positive results to their operations.

Ninety per cent of surveyed firms said that healthy competitiveness and elimination of the monopoly in several industries would create the most positive results, and 87.8 per cent believed commitments on equal and fair competition between state-owned and private companies would create a "good shift" for their operations.

On the top of the list of the 500 biggest private firms, Vinamilk was followed by Doji Gold and Gems Group, FPT Corporation, Vingroup Joint Stock Company, and Hoa Phat Group JSC.

An awards ceremony to honour the 500 on the list is expected to be held in HCM City next month.