VietNamNet Bridge - While many Vietnamese people are pessimistic about economic development, foreign institutions have shown objective opinions that Vietnam’s economy continues to progress.

 

\While many Vietnamese people are pessimistic about economic development, foreign institutions have shown objective opinions that Vietnam’s economy continues to progress.

On the last day of 2015, Huynh The Du, a renowned economist. wrote on his Facebook that Vietnamese people tend to compare Vietnam with developed countries, or the countries which are far ahead of Vietnam and they feel pessimistic about the economic development. However, to be fair, though a lot of problems still exist, Vietnam is among the countries which have made the best improvements in basic indexes in the last three decades.

Du’s viewpoint coincides with the thoughts of many international institutions.

In a report released on December 23, ANZ-Roy Morgan said the Vietnamese consumer confidence index in December increased to a 2-year record high and reached the highest level in Asia.

In 2015, nearly 100,000 businesses were set up, an increase of 30 percent over the year before, according to Technische Universitat Munchen and GfK.

ANZ commented that the figures showed the belief that Vietnam would be one of the economies in Asia to see outstanding development in 2016-2017.

At a workshop held in late November, responding to the comment that Vietnam has been lagging far behind the world, the WB Country Director Victoria Kwakwa said Vietnam has been the second fastest growing economy in the world in the last 25 years, just after China.

Kwakwa gave evidence to show that the gap in GDP per capita between Vietnam and other countries has narrowed. In 1990, Vietnam’s GDP per capita was just equal to 1/16 of Thailand’s. The figure was 1/10 in 1995 and 1/5 in 2000. It is expected that Vietnam’s GDP per capita in 2015 was equal to 40 percent of Thailand’s.

Bloomberg has reported that Vietnam, together with India and China, has the sixth fastest GDP growth rate in among emerging economies in 2015. The newswire believes that Vietnam may be the economy with the highest GDP growth rate in South East Asia in 2015.

On December 29, Singaporean Channel News Asia published an article titled ‘Why Vietnam’s economy is outperforming its Southeast Asian peers’, commenting that Vietnam seems to be contrary to the regional trend of economic slowdown.

While the global trade recession and the Chinese economic slowdown hindering economic growth in nearly all regional countries, Vietnam has managed to ‘defy gravity’.

The Bangkok Post on December 28 commented that the wait-and-see moment in Vietnam is over, and that investors are advised to take the plunge in one of Southeast Asia’s most promising economies. 

It wrote that with growth of 6.5 percent this year, Vietnam has been a magnet for global investors in recent years as the government has been trying to improve the investment environment.

In 2015, nearly 100,000 businesses were set up, an increase of 30 percent over the year before, according to Technische Universitat Munchen and GfK.


NLD