The Ministry of Public Security's Investigation Police Agency has just issued an investigation conclusion, proposing to prosecute 8 defendants in the case of Bribery, Receiving Bribes and Violating Bidding Regulations causing serious consequences occurring at the Vietnam Education Publishing House One Member Co., Ltd. and related units.

Mr. Nguyen Duc Thai, former Chairman of Vietnam Education Publishing House, was accused of receiving bribes many times, with a total amount of up to 24.9 billion VND to facilitate two companies to participate in supplying printing paper.

Former Chairman of the Board of Directors of Phung Vinh Hung Company - To My Ngoc and Director of Minh Cuong Phat Company - Nguyen Tri Minh were proposed to be prosecuted for bribery in the period 2017-2021.

In addition, many officials of Vietnam Education Publishing House were also prosecuted for bidding violations, causing serious consequences.

Vietnam Education Publishing House makes huge profits

According to the initial conclusion of the Investigation Police Agency, this purchase of printing paper is done annually, the price of printing paper accounts for 30-40% of the textbook selling price structure. Therefore, buying printing paper at a high price will increase the price of books.

Despite the high price of input materials (printing paper), Vietnam Education Publishing House has recorded impressive revenue and profit in recent years.

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Vietnam Education Publishing House still makes big profits despite high costs.

In 2023, the audit report recorded that the net revenue of Vietnam Education Publishing House increased by about 10.3% compared to the previous year, from VND 3,106 billion to VND 3,425 billion. In 2021, Vietnam Education Publishing House achieved revenue of VND 2,451 billion; after-tax profit was quite high, reaching nearly VND 382 billion in 2023 compared to VND 409 billion in 2022 and VND 358 billion in 2021.

Vietnam Education Publishing House has equity of VND 1,472 billion by the end of 2023, VND 1,406 billion by the end of 2022 and VND 1,325 billion by the end of 2021.

Thus, the profit/equity ratio of Vietnam Education Publishing House is quite high, reaching 27% in 2021, 29% in 2022 and 26% in 2023.

Denying the story that 'making textbooks is very profitable'

Vietnam Education Publishing House has two sets of textbooks: Connecting knowledge with life and Creative horizons. Vietnam Education Investment and Publishing Joint Stock Company (VEPIC) has the Canh Dieu book set. These are three sets of books approved by the Ministry of Education and Training after appraisal, serving as a basis for schools to choose and teach from the 2023-2024 school year.

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Textbook prices are rising.

In response to many opinions that making textbooks brings high profits, in August 2024, a representative of the Vietnam Education Publishing House said that the textbook making process of the Vietnam Education Publishing House must go through 8 steps: Building a team of authors; building a model including a general outline, detailed outline, editing and design; 2 rounds of national assessment; introducing books; training teachers to use books and supplying textbooks...

“Therefore, there are many costs in the price structure of textbooks. Vietnam Education Publishing House and other textbook publishing units must declare prices based on the cost structure and must be approved by the Price Management Department - Ministry of Finance . Thus, in reality, there is almost no or very little profit from textbooks. Vietnam Education Publishing House makes a profit from other books such as: supplementary books, reference books...

But public opinion, even those in the industry, do not know this, they just think that the Vietnam Education Publishing House has a revenue of 3,000 billion and a profit of 300 billion from textbooks. If making textbooks was that easy and profitable, there would probably be many publishers and private units participating in compiling and publishing textbooks," said a representative of the Vietnam Education Publishing House.

The representative of this Publishing House added that the price of textbooks is made up of many factors, focusing on 5 factors including: Cost of organizing the manuscript, royalties, production costs: including paper and printing costs, circulation costs (also known as distribution costs); financial costs (also known as interest).

The cost of organizing the manuscript of a set of textbooks is up to hundreds of billions of VND; the current royalties are calculated by class period (regardless of the number of books printed). The total royalties of the two textbook sets “Connecting knowledge with life” and “Creative horizons” of the Vietnam Education Publishing House are also up to nearly 70 billion VND each year.

In addition, production costs also amount to thousands of billions of VND (including paper and printing costs), while the current production costs of the Publishing House are entirely based on bank loans. The costs for circulation and distribution are also very large," said the Publishing House representative.

According to the Vietnam Education Publishing House, in reality, the organization of compiling, printing and publishing textbooks is not the exclusive right of the Vietnam Education Publishing House. Currently, there are 7 publishing houses licensed by the Ministry of Information and Communications to publish textbooks, but only 6 publishers participate because publishing textbooks is not easy.