This study is to aim at providing a brief overview on the Vietnamese economy since the introduction of economic reform in 1986, in which we mainly focus on the equitization process of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the development of financial markets. Results from the paper shows that the extensive 1986 economic reform package had a significant and positive impact on the Vietnamese economy. Moreover, we find that the number of SOEs has significantly reduced over the past two decades given measures of the government in re-organizing SOEs. Of all the measures, the equitization programme plays an important role with the contribution of over 36 percent to the total number of reorganized SOEs. Finally, we can see that in the Vietnamese economy bank lending and recently, equity financing, have prevailed as important souces of fund for financing firm investment.