Forming Social Capital from the Bottom Up: The Emergent Private Sector in Vietnam, 1986–2002

Abstract

Distinct from the household and petty-enterprise sector of the Vietnamese economy is what the government officially terms the ‘private’ sector — that is, the private corporate sector. After 1986, this sector began from much smaller numbers than the household-enterprise sector, but it has grown exponentially in the last decade. In 1988 the state formally declared the private sector to have ‘long-term importance’ for the economy. The right to private property came four years later, with a new constitution in 1992 (MPDF, 1997, p. 16; 1999a, p. 11). The constitution also affirmed personal freedoms, which were further specified in a 1995 Civil Code. The Commercial Law of 1998 specifically affirmed private ownership and fair treatment in commercial matters. The Enterprise Law of 2000 reduced the imposing array of regulations which effectively discouraged private initiative, while an administrative court, established in 1996, provided redress against governmental heavy-handedness (Truong, 2000, pp. 134–9).