Experts optimistic about Vietnam’s post-pandemic recovery prospect
Hanoi (VNA) –
Like many other countries across the world, Vietnam has been badly affected by
the COVID-19 pandemic. However, experts still forecast a positive prospect for the
Vietnamese economy after the pandemic is stamped out.
“Still,
Vietnam may get out of the pandemic in better shape than others. Despite the
expected growth rate decreasing to 4.9 percent in 2020, it is among the few
economies in the Asia Pacific - and perhaps in the world - that still have positive growth rates,” said Nguyen Khac
Giang, a senior research fellow at the Vietnam Institute for Economic and
Policy Research (VEPR) under the University of Economics and Business – the Vietnam
National University, and a PhD candidate at the Victoria University of Wellington.
“The Asian Development Bank (ADB), while
predicting the country’s sharp decrease in GDP growth, said that the Vietnamese
economy remains ‘uniquely robust’ in the sub-region.
Sharply decreased oil prices - despite a greater burden on Vietnam’s strained
budget - give Vietnamese policymakers room for monetary and fiscal stimulus as
inflation concerns fade away,” he said.
Giang added that Vietnam’s success in curbing the pandemic might attract foreign investors, as will
its traditional advantages of cheap labour, political stability, and proximity
to China. Social distancing is also helping accelerate the country’s
transformation to a digital economy, which is considered by the government as a
pillar of sustainable growth.
Adam McCarty, Chief Economist of Mekong Economics in
Hanoi, also held that when the Vietnamese government declares an end to local
coronavirus spread, the domestic economy is likely to bounce back as far as it
can without foreign tourists.
“The domestic economy could revive and all the masks
could come off, so that would be a big stimulus and that could happen in less
than a month from now,” he said.
According to the website www.voanews.com, Vietnamese
officials are preparing for a limited economic revival as their coronavirus
caseload stays low.
The government
is rolling out incentives now to revive companies including export
manufacturers, a backbone of the economy. Factories are still operating on local labor, and export growth
from January 1 through March 15 grew 6.8 percent over the same period of 2019,
it noted.
German enterprises were also optimistic about the
medium-term recovery of the Vietnamese economy, according to the AHK World
Business Outlook 2020 released recently by the German Chambers of Commerce and
Industry (DIHK).
Although
German firms expressed concerns about negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic
on their business with 82 percent of investors forced to lower revenue growth
targets in the 2020 fiscal year, they expected recovery to come in the medium
term.
Up to 72 percent of the respondents to the survey on which the report was based said they would continue to invest in Vietnam while 27 percent plan to recruit more workers./.