specific to enterprises of any particular size grouping—but instead about issues specific to formally registered private companies.

# **III.  SURVEY OBJECTIVES AND METHODOLOGY**

# **Objectives**

13. The firm-level survey conducted for this report provides complementary information that both supplements and serves as a check on official GSO data. The survey allowed testing of a hypothesis that official statistics underestimate labor in the domestic formal private sector. The survey further sought to update information on employment and related business information gathered by earlier private sector surveys, with an eye to seeing what changes may have occurred with the dramatic increase in private sector registrations since implementation of the new 1999 Enterprise Law.

# **Methodology**

14. _The Approach._ The survey’s target population of enterprises was Vietnam’s formal domestic private sector—defined as all sole proprietorship firms, limited liability companies, joint-stock companies, and partnership companies registered under either the 1991 Company Law or 1999 Enterprises Law (See Section II). The survey randomly selected 200 manufacturing and construction firms and 200 service firms, with limits only on geographic location and not on firm size or activity. The decision to have a larger representation of industrial firms was based on these firms’ role as the most prolific providers of jobs in the private sector.

15. _The Population._ The six provinces included in the survey were: Binh Duong, Ho Chi Minh City and Long An in the South, Hai Phong, Hanoi, and Ha Tay in the North. These provinces were chosen for three main reasons: i.) they host a high percentage of all private companies in Vietnam, particularly the larger manufacturers<sup>12</sup> —allowing for both a study of success and a maximum efficiency with regard to implementation; ii.) they represented both North and South and urban and rural; and iii.) five of the six were surveyed in 1991 and 1997 by ILSSA and the Stockholm School of Economics— allowing comparison on some questions across years and for the survey to benefit from ILSSA’s previous experience and contacts. Four of the six provinces were also included in the 1999 private sector survey by MPDF. Within each province/city, sample populations were further limited to two districts that were seen together to be reasonably representative of the whole province/city.

16. Lists of registered firms for each district were provided by local Departments of Planning and Investment (DPI) offices through CIEM. DPIs are the local government offices with official responsibility for maintaining registration lists. Registration lists are different from lists of existing companies as they do not guarantee that firms are actually operational and do not keep track of firms that have moved to a new location. Even

> 12 According to 1998 figures, the survey designers had available at the time of implementation, these six provinces represented 39% of all private companies, 28% of all private manufacturers, and at least 55% of firms with 100 or more employees (based on information for the four firms that overlapped with the MPDF study).  According to 2000 figures gathered later, the six provinces are home to an even higher 47% of all private companies, 38% of all private manufacturers and at least 53% of firms with 100 or more employees.

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