General Director Bui Ngoc Bao receives the 2009 “National Emulation Fighter” title at the Petrolimex congress of outstanding individuals

The Vietnam National Petroleum Corporation (Petrolimex) currently has 66 subsidiary companies, three joint ventures, more than 1,900 petro stations, 25,000 employees and around 5,500 agents throughout the country.

In addition to supplying almost 60 percent of the nation’s petrol demands through its modern facilities and ports, Petrolimex has strongly developed the petrochemicals markets in Cambodia, Laos, China, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. General Director Bui Ngoc Bao is the person in charge and responsible to the Government and the Ministry of Industry and Trade for managing Petrolimex’s extensive and modern petrol network.

Five years of breakthrough

Over almost 55 years of construction and development, whenever and in whatever situation, Petrolimex has always kept its key role as the State’s tool in ensuring supply of petrol and petrochemical products to serve the country’s socio-economic development and national defence and security as well as for domestic consumption.

In recent years (especially during the period 2005-2009), Petrolimex has faced a wide range of difficulties when world petroleum prices have kept increasing. As a result, the State has had to provide subsidies for petrol traders. Over the past two years, the State has applied market mechanisms and has stopped subsidising petrol traders, but Petrolimex has still coped with the challenges because it had been asked to stabilise prices and curb inflation.

Despite these difficulties, Petrolimex has managed to expand its business to other fields such as aviation fuel, gas, lubricants, asphalt, chemicals; petroleum transportation, mechanical engineering; designing and constructing oil and gas projects; real estate, import-export, insurance, banking; telecoms informatics and automation.

During the past five years, Petrolimex has made several breakthroughs, disbursing almost 4.36 trillion VND to upgrade its infrastructure, apply and develop information technology and advanced management systems, and install fire and explosion prevention and control equipment. These systems have reached regional standards in terms of quality and met the requirements of the country’s industrialisation and modernisation process.

Many projects with large sums of investment were approved by the Board of Directors and have been carried out effectively. Worthy of note is a strategy to develop a fleet of seagoing vessels for the Vietnam Petroleum Transport Joint Stock Company (Vipco) and the Vietnam Tanker Joint Stock Company (Vitaco) and another project to build and operate the ship Van Phong 1, thereby enhancing the transport capacity of Petrolimex’s fleet which are now able to reach out to the world market.

Petrolimex has effectively implemented the Party and the State’s policies on re-organising, reforming and improving the operational efficiency of enterprises. Currently, Petrolimex has 23 joint stock businesses, including a commercial joint stock bank, a one-member limited liability company based in Singapore and three joint ventures. Petrolimex is now undergoing its equitisation in a move to turn itself into a powerful multi-ownership petroleum group.

Thanks to these breakthroughs, Petrolimex has been always one of the country’s businesses to contribute the largest revenues to the state budget. Over the past five years, Petrolimex has contributed nearly 77 trillion VND, an average of 15 trillion VND a year, to the state budget. Its revenues increased by 241 percent from 44 trillion VND in 2005 to 105 trillion VND in 2009. The total profits reached 4.71 trillion VND, an average of 941 billion VND a year. The corporation currently employs more than 25,000 workers with an average monthly income of 5.2 million VND in 2009, double the amount in 2005.

Corporate benefits placed within national interests

These breakthroughs have helped Petrolimex to achieve a high level of efficiency in production and business activities, especially since October 2007 when Mr. Bui Ngoc Bao was officially appointed General Director. The recent results have confirmed the role of the decisive General Director who inherited and upheld Petrolimex’s traditions to make it a multi-ownership petroleum group with strong and sustainable development.

In his capacity as member of the Board of Directors and General Director, Mr. Bui Ngoc Bao has undertaken and instructed the building of strategies, projects and long-term, medium-term and annual development plans. He has been responsible for personnel affairs; the fields of finance, banking, insurance, information technology; enterprise reform and development; and overseas investment and business activities.

General Director Bui Ngoc Bao has been tasked to decide the method, scale and mechanisms for business and ways of evaluating goods, materials, equipment, import-export, domestic business. He has also been in charge of deciding the target, scale and form of investment of projects; economic and technical norms; internal management regulations; technological development plans; planning and developing human resources; protecting property rights and developing Petrolimex’s brand name.

Bearing in mind the viewpoint “Corporate benefits must be placed within the common interests of the nation and consumers”, General Director Bui Ngoc Bao and the Petrolimex leadership have always focused on stabilising the market as assigned by the Government when world petroleum prices fluctuated strongly (particularly in 2008). They instructed and operated their affiliated companies to ensure sufficient supplies of oil and gasoline, thereby helping to stabilise people’s lives.

In recent years, Petrolimex has pioneered and set a good example in guaranteeing the quality of its commodities, combating trade fraud, protecting consumers’ interests (in terms of petroleum products), investing in fire and explosion prevention and control systems and protecting the environment. Petrolimex has been the biggest provider of oil and petrol for the domestic market (accounting for close to 60 percent), but received the smallest amount of compensation for the price differences amongst petrol importers.

The General Director has attached a great importance to the human factor, saying that “people should be placed in the central position and the business is considered as a means for people to show their talent and creativeness”. It is that viewpoint which has maintained the connectivity and discipline of the network and created the vitality for Petrolimex to develop further.

Petrolimex has already built a human resources development strategy and long-term training plans and has actively groomed a succession of senior officials. Since 2005, the corporation has spent almost 39 billion VND on its training programmes, under which 150 directors and 700 others in medium-level management positions received training. It has recently embarked a programme to train around 2,000 store managers. Petrolimex now boasts a contingent of leading experts in management, technology and business, with close to 100 of its employees holding doctorates and postgraduate decrees, 26 percent of its workforce being university graduates and all of its personnel trained in professional skills. Petrolimex has been a pioneer in studying and proposing planning schemes, petroleum standards, work safety and hygiene, environmental sanitation, and macro management polices on petroleum trading to build a petroleum market with healthy competition to ensure consumers’ interests and combat trade fraud.

Petrolimex has taken the lead in international cooperation, seeking markets, establishing commercial relations with countries around the world and fulfilling its international duty in supplying petrol to Laos and Cambodia. It has also looked for potential partners such as China, foreign shipping fleets, industrial and processing export zones.

The Prime Minister, the Party Committee for the central economic sector, the Ministry of Trade (now the Ministry of Industry and Trade) have presented many certificates of merit to General Director Bui Ngoc Bao in recognition of his contributions to Petrolimex’s development in particular and the industry and trade sector in general. Bao was also granted the “Emulation Fighter” title conferred by the former Ministry of Trade and the current Ministry of Industry and Trade and named as “Emulation Fighter at grassroots-level” for seven years in a row.

In 2009, General Director Bui Ngoc Bao was recognised as a “National Emulation Fighter” and elected as an official delegate to the industry and trade sector’s upcoming emulation congress./.

Thanh Huong