State Trade and Industry

State Trades Systems

In a conference with the cadres of Ho Chi Minh City when he arrived in Saigon, Do Muoi declared that the trade and industry reforms consisted not only in incorporating all private trades and industry enterprises into the State trades industry systems but also in seizing firm control on the economy, preventing capitalist competition and production surplus, and averting speculation and labor exploitation to secure economic sanity in response to the needs of the people. As regards farm products, the State would have enough stations and stocks all along the routes from the provinces to the city, felicitating the transportation and distribution of goods, and so on. A system of foods distribution modeled on the system of State trade and industry administration applied after the trade and industry reforms in Hanoi and major cities in 1958 was established to carry out the objectives set for economic reforms in the South. Do Muoi’s decorations proved to be vain hopes, however. To the distress of the new regime, food shortages increasingly damaged the economy. They not only created sufferings to the common people and city-dwellers but also fomented hardship in the economic life of the contingents of Party cadres and State employees in the interior of the administration itself.

In 1960, two years after the appropriation of private trade and industry properties, the population in the North had endured a multitude of sufferings as a result of socialist administration of foods.  Members of the Politburo were supplied without reimbursement all necessities and served with means of living of high standards without reimbursement. .High-level rank and file officials and cadres were supplied with necessities of high quality at the State Department Store on Ton Dan Dan Street.  Middle-level rank and file officials and cadres and State employees were admitted to the membership of moderate State Foods stores for provisions at the streets on such streets as Pho Nha Chung, Dang Dung, and Van Ho. In addition, they were entitled to privileges, and interests. Middle- and   lower rank and file State employees, cadres, workers, and common citizens were allocated provisions at various common State foods stores on their streets. They had to pay everything although their salaries and wages could not afford them live from hand to mouth.

 State trades systems were somehow different in the South.  Right in the beginning of the trade and industry reforms, lines of services for foods supplies were extensively   established in Saigon where overpopulation was major problem. The Ministry for Foods sent more than 3,000 cadres to Saigon to operate a network of distribution of rice on State subsidies. Thousands of foods stores were in action in on the streets and alleys of the Saigon, Cho Lon, and Gia Dinh Are.as State foods stores were a typical economic feature of socialism. Disorder marks a new socialist way of life. Lines of people of all ages, including teenagers and children, crowded in front of the State provisions stores from the early morning for rice and cereals at lower prices. Rice at state stores was mostly of very poor quality; it floats when soaked in water. Authorities explained that the State sold the same kind of rice it collected directly from the growers. The fault was not theirs. .Dishonest people mixed damp rice with grains of clay for better gains. Poor conservation of rice added to the mismanagement of business of the cadres in charge makes the State trade a nuisance. By 1978 when the food shortage was at its height, yam and horse-feeding grains were substituted for rice, city dwellers had to stay on delayed yam and hard- to- digest horse-feeding grains. On the other hand, cheating and lying by corrupt cadres, poor transportation of products from the rural areas to the cities, inadequate conservation of rice at storage house made foods shortages increasingly severe. Still, rice growers were reluctant to sell their products to the State due to threats from local authorities and the cadres in charge who only cared for personal interests. In many areas, rice plants was heaped up in the fields and decayed while city-dwellers were starving for foods.

Distributions and allocations of necessities in the city were equally lamentable. A network of distribution of goods was organized to supply the city dwellers with the necessities. The business operated according to time. Petrol was once in a while allocated tithe households, each with few liters. People could find other necessities in the open markets anywhere and at any time in the “free market.” Interestingly enough, distribution of goods in Saigon, mainly foods, equally took place at public services departments, offices, schools, and hospitals. By 1960, distribution of goods in Hanoi was decided on classification of categories and standards. Supplies for members of the Politburo the Party Central Party, and level officials and cadres were not limited. Supplies for other categories were regulated by standards.  Households in the category of A1, belonging to the category of State employees of the lowest rank was allocated some 3 ounces of meat each monthly. Households of low-level State employees and common workers was allocated  5 meters of fabric yearly, from 3 to 5 ounces of neat monthly, and 4 liters of petrol monthly. In 1978, dis allocation of foods in Saigon was somewhat different. Except for “very important persons,” everyone is equal, and thus every portion of meat, for instance, is equal, each State employee with several ounces of meat now and then. An office, a classroom, or a chamber for operations in a hospital was likely to be market places where the servants of the people vied for a larger portion of meat or a larger bundle or vegetables.

State Industry Administration

Private industrial establishments and facilities were all confiscated, nationalized or transferred to the State following the campaigns for appropriation of private trade and industry properties in September 1975. Owners and staff members of both large and small mills, factories, and companies in Saigon became State employees, and the workers, the State union members. Everyone was mobilized to double efforts to work for socialist production. Private trade and industry properties persisted. It was not until March 1978 that private facilities of smaller shops were dispossessed.  Elsewhere in the country, trade and industry proprietors of the old political regime were mobilized or simply coerced to incorporate their businesses into State corporations or joint ventures under the management of the State. Individual proprietors of small shops were encouraged to incorporate theirs into small companies working under State supervision. In every city, ward cooperatives of all crafts were formed to incorporate individual crafts hands into groups to work on contract with the State.

Programs for State industry production development, nevertheless, were increasingly stagnating due lack of expertise, poor management, and bureaucracy.  Mediocre administrators from the North were assigned to key positions in administrative boards of services. They preferred doing their jobs on orders from the superiors and directives from higher authorities to developing initiatives to improve methods and techniques in response to the actual situation. Still, factionalism and corruption were pervasive. Unproductive relatives of cadres were recruited to work in replacement of capable employees of the old regime. Facilities and means of production were misused or even distributed among the authorities or exchanged for personal profits. Sixty trucks at the VISO Company were transferred to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications for use without specified reason. Tractors, trolleys, rollers, and factories equipment and other means of agricultural and industrial predictions were left abandoned in the sun or ruined hangars and storage houses.

In addition poor management, State experts, technicians, and administrators from the socialist North were in a quandary about how to make use of Western modern machinery. Students at all departments of the Faculty of Agriculture at Thu Duc were given handrails, picks, and hoes to learn and transform farm soil. Students at the Polytechnics University were instructed machinery technics with primary tools and implements mainly at transformers, rail mills, cutters, and lathers. While the country was in want of modern technology ‘most experts of foreign nationality were expelled from service, and engines of the old regime were sent to reeducation; others were sent to Hanoi to get knowledge of the workings of the industry systems of the socialist North. It is worth Contrariness often happened in the interior of the machinery of administration of the new regime in the South. Engineers from the North’ were not familiar with the operations of machinery from Western countries and methods of working in lines at chain work. They were content to adapt themselves to the laissez-faire. The MSG VISO Company, the Thanh Cong Textile Mill, and the ESSO were left paralyzed due to lack of expertise. Equipment and materials penury created a major problem.

 Contrariness basically originated from ideological concepts. According to rhetoricians of the regime at the time, socialist production, first and foremost, consists in the achievement of economic independence and self-efficiency. Reliance on rice production is of primary concern. At the time when severe foods shortages were severe, efforts were doubled to push forward provisions security programs. The circular 306 Togo November 18-1980 issued by the Prime Minister specifically provided strict measures.  Factories and companies throughout the country had to organize workers and employees into teams to take turns to go to the countryside to help increase rice production. Workers at factories and companies throughout the country were mobilized to do agricultural works to increase production. In Saigon, workers at factories and plants were moved to Long An to gather rice.

Materials shortages particularly created a serious problem in the handicrafts productions.  Members of groups of the handicrafts were out of work due to materials penury. Cooperatives were disassociated due to capital shortness. Trades groups and cooperatives members were largely hands without experience in their trades. Most of them were mostly relatives or family members of rank-and file officials under reeducation and low-level civil servants of the old regime. They registered at some trades wards offices for socialist production out of fear resisting taking part in socialist production. Again, peculations and exchanges of contrabands thrived. Open markets mushroomed. The administration faced multiple difficulties. The Board of   the Party Committee of Saigon conducted intermittent daily affair sessions, hoping to mete out foods shortages. The concentration economy with State subsidies