The commercial affairs in which some businesses in the northern sea city of Hai Phong were sold at 20,000 dong for each have raised big worries among the local authorities.

Dan Duc Hiep, Deputy Chair of the Hai Phong People’s Committee, said at a conference held in early July that a business, established in 2011, continuously bought some businesses within just a few months. The value of every affair was 20,000 dong, or one dollar. The majority of the sold businesses have big land plots, but they incurred big losses of up to one trillion of dong.

It’s still unclear about how the new owner of the business would deal with the creditors of the sold businesses. The problem is that the huge debts have been known only to the Hai Phong Planning and Investment Department when the department contacted banks to get some more information when dealing with the applications from the enterprises for changing business registration certificates.

“How about the fulfillment of the debt duties to other partners and creditors?” Hiep questioned.

Under the current regulations, the business registration agency has to change the business registration certificates after the involved parties agree and fulfill financial duties as stipulated.

In this case, analysts said, the management agencies have been put in a passive mode, because they do not have sufficient information about the operation of the enterprises.

According to Lawyer Bui Thanh Lam from Lien A and Associates Law Firm, the “one dollar” commercial affairs in Vietnam have become more popular. The first one dollar affair which was made pubic in Vietnam occurred in 2006, in which Tre Dong Nai Enterprise bought Cheerfield Vina, a 100 percent foreign invested enterprise with 2 million dollars in chartered capital. When taking over Cheerfield Vina, Tre Dong Nai had also to take over the huge debt of 34 billion dong.

This can be seen as the behavior of buying debts to take over businesses, carried out among the banks (the debt seller), the buyer and the company for sale. After finishing the sale of the debts, the bank would transfer all the rights and duties of enterprises to the new creditor.

Lawyer Lam does not see the high possibility of the involved parties avoiding tax or refusing to fulfill the enterprise’s duties after the enterprise was sold. The documents relating to the debt sale must show all the relating provisions on the capital transfer and the rights for management of the buyer.

After the transaction is completed, the buyer would become the new owner of the enterprise. The involved parties would wrap up necessary procedures to terminate the debt purchase contracts as follow other necessary steps as required by the laws.

Lam also said there’s no need to worry that enterprises would dodge the laws and evade the assignment duties, because in this case, no income is generated.

The worry of the deputy chair of the Hai Phong City People’s Committee lies in the lack of the information about the operation of businesses. In many cases, business registration agencies were only informed about the disappearance of businesses when the letters to the enterprises are sent back because of no receiver.

Vietnam is building up a national business registration database, which is believed to help update all necessary information about businesses’ operation. However, the system now just can undertake a part of the job.

Source: VTC/ VNN