(From an article on The Economist August 5th-11th 2006)
Recently, there have been a few articles on The Economist, a very famous newspaper about Vietnam. In its "Asia" part, there are a lot of articles about Thailand and China of course. Yet, as a Vietnamese, I'm attracted to those articles about Vietnam and most of the time feeling proud to read about good things in Vietnam through Western eyes.
Here are some highlights in the article.
”An economic boom is accompanied by remarkable success in getting rid of poverty and raising life expectancy.”
Vietnam is going to host the Asia-Pacific economic summit in November. That meeting will be taken place in Tu Liem, Hanoi's south-western edge. The infrastructure is described: "… the futuristic conference center, with a distinctive wavy glass roof”, “ a huge five-star hotel is getting a final coat of paint. Along Tu Liem’s broad, four-lane avenues, some apartments are already occupied…”, “ between the building sited, cows and buffalo still graze in what was open pasture only recently.”
Since 1990, Vietnam’s exports have increases faster than China’s and shows no signs of slackening. VN is now competing in Brazilians as a second coffee exporter. It is ramping up its exports of everything from shrimps to shoes. It is the largest exporter of pepper and aims soon to overtake Thailand in rice. It is even selling tea to India.
Foreigners are also growing and gaining fast. Intel has just decided to build a $650m microchip plant in Ho Chi Minh City. Agriculture’s share of economic output is continuing to shrink from 25% in 2000 to 21% last year and may be down to 15% in 2010.
“Vietnam’s objective is to become a modest industrial nation by 2020. Of course, other Asian countries’ leaders declare similar objectives. The difference is Vietnam’s rulers seem to mean it.”
Vietnam has overtaken China, India and Philipines and only slightly after Indonesia in getting rid of poverty. VN has done better than Thailand and other richer countries in raising life expectancy and infant morality since the 1990s. The percentage of secondary-school age is up about a third since 1990, overtaking India, China and Indonesia.
Good times, bad times
“Vietnam is on a roll and its prospects look good. But much could still go wrong. As Vietnam is going to join WTO it is becoming more vulnerable to volatile commodity prices and fickle bond-market investors, whose gyrations are largely outside its control. The recent export surge has been helped by strong global demand and high prices for the things Vietnam sells, from rice to crude oil, but a world recession or an economic bust in China could cause a big slowdown. The government is racing to build enough power stations, roads and railways to keep the economy moving. Any delays in these would spell trouble.”
If the communist government fails to reduce corruption or produce jobs for more than 1m young Vietnamese and the 1m villagers the country’s social cohesion and sense of purpose would be in danger. That makes is vital to accelerate the government’s program to restructure and sell thousands of state-owned firms. The private sector provides most of the growth in jobs and exports but would do better still if it was not crowded out by the public sector.
