The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development plans to create largeagri-businesses by merging several existing joint-stock companies toincrease scale and boost exports.

Nguyen Phu Hung, deputychief of the ministry's business management and renovation department,said, however, that the individual businesses must be financially strongenough for the process to go ahead.

He admitted theprogramme cannot be carried out immediately since most State-ownedagricultural companies are in the process of equitisation and need timeto shore up their finances.

The Vietnam Rubber Group(VRG), founded in 2006, is the country's only large agriculturalcorporation, with a capital of 19 trillion VND (1 billion USD), morethan half owned by the State.

Also the country's leadingrubber exporter, it has a 60 per cent share of the domestic rubbermarket.

Vietnam is a major agricultural economy withan annual output of 40 million tonnes of food crops, of which it exports10 million tonnes.

Hung said his ministry will furtherstudy the project before submitting it to the Government for approvalnext year.

Meanwhile, the process of equitisingagricultural businesses remains stuck due to a plethora of problems.

For instance, each business has on average charter capital of20 billion VND (1.1 million USD) with 15 percent of them - especially inthe vegetable and tea sectors - having less than 1 billion VND (60,000USD).

As a result, of the 16 businesses run by theMinistry of Agriculture and Rural Development, only two have beenequitised while 12 have been transformed into parent-subsidiarylimited-liability companies; two others have merged./.