President Truong Tan Sang said it was necessary that small and medium enterprises pay attention to raising income and ensuring a favourable working environment for labourers and actively participate in social activities to make practical contributions to implementing objectives set by the State and Party for the new year.

He was speaking at a reception yesterday afternoon for more than 100 outstanding business people representing over 500,000 Vietnamese small and medium enterprises.

"Small and medium enterprises should prioritise co-operation and linkage in production and business, creating a value chain and ensuring the unity and strength of their community so they can be prepared for competition. They should also pay attention to both export and domestic markets and actively join in the campaigns of the nation as well those launched by their own.

"The association itself should accelerate the expansion of its network to localities nationwide to provide timely professional advice, helping enterprises to solve shortcomings they face in production and business and instructing enterprises to effectively enforce State policies and laws," he said.

The President urged the association to actively participate in human resource training, trade promotion, technological transfer, commodity production and consumption linkage, investment, experience exchange and economic integration for the development of the nation.

He also appraised their significant role not only in economic development but also in generating jobs and social security.

"Enterprises have taken an active part and carried out many social responsibility activities," he said.

However, he requested "business people, small and medium enterprises to be more active, more creative, and dare to think and dare to work in diverse business areas; to avoid sitting and waiting for and counting on others; and to study non-stop to enhance their capacity to satisfy the requirements of development and integration."

During the reception, representatives from enterprises expected the President to soon get the Constitution fully enforced and concretise legal documents, creating a more transparent legal framework and an equal playing field for economic sectors, especially in terms of capital, tax, production space, technological renovation, human resource training and administrative procedures.

They also asked the State to bring the restructuring of small and medium enterprises in the action strategy to the same level as the plan to restructure big State-owned corporations.