Cuban and Argentinean media recently ran stories with a focus on Vietnam’s economic achievements.

In an article on its website, the Cuban Journalists’ Association highlighted Vietnam’s renewal process, starting in 1986, that has turned the war-torn country into one of the strongest economies in Southeast Asia.

The article said Vietnam focused its renewal on updating economic mindset so as to create positive changes in its economic model and management mechanisms. Economic elements from State-run, private and cooperative ones to joint ventures co-exist in harmony, taking the country along the chosen path to a socialism-oriented market economy.

The story cited published data that Vietnam’s gross domestic product (GDP) rose at an average annual pace of 7 percent over two decades with GDP per capita increasing by 3.2 times from 1986.

With incentives to agriculture, rice and coffee have become Vietnam’s staple exports while industrial and tourism sectors have also received the best possible conditions to develop, it added.

Meanwhile, Argentina’s La Nación newspaper called the Southeast Asian country as a symbol of economic success in Southeast Asia with surging exports and foreign direct investments.

It said Vietnam, together with Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, is becoming an attractive industrial hub with competitive labour cost and dynamism.

The nation is switching from producing simple electronic products to more advanced ones as a number of global electronic giants have invested here, such as Intel beginning its production in Vietnam in 2010, the newspaper said, adding that major Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese groups such as Bridgestone and Panasonic also chose Vietnam as their investment destination.

La Nación underlined the case of Samsung Electronics, which was recently licensed to build a 3 billion USD mobile phone factory, bringing its total investment in Vietnam to more than 11 billion USD. About 40 percent of the firm’s smartphones worldwide are expected to be manufactured in the country next year.-VNA