Hi
Please do not post access here. This is a public forum. I've edited it, hopefully noone saw it.
About the question, I'm afraid I cannot find anything in settings, so let check if it's not because of the override from template. To do this please make a small test and rename folder /html/com_virtuemart/manufacturer to /html/com_virtuemart/_manufacturer and let me know when You will do this. If there will be no difference than You will have to ask VM developers for help, but let's do this test first.