Vietnam remains an attractive destination for retail investment until 2012, said a US market research company, citing the country’s strong GDP growth, regulatory structure changes favouring foreign investors, and increasing consumer demand for modern retail concepts.

According to US-based market research consulting services company RNCOS, rapid growth in Vietnam ’s retail market in the recent past has made the country an attractive destination for multinational retailers.

Vietnam Retail Analysis (2008-2012), a research report from RNCOS, also said that the retail sector market in Vietnam is much smaller as compared to other developing economies in Asia , but it has shown strong fundamentals with the value of retail sales having expanded rapidly to nearly 39 billion USD in 2008 from around 23.7 billion USD in 2005.

The RNCOS predicted Vietnam’s retail industry would surpass 85 billion USD in revenues by 2012 and modern retail channels are expected to play crucial role in the future growth of the industry, improving their position in the market.

“Traditional retail channels will continue to dominate the market, but government decision to allow 100 percent entry to foreign retailers under WTO commitment will lead modern retail to realize unrealistic growth,” the report said.

The future outlook mentioned in report has been derived by interacting with various industry veterans, developers, analysing information from research papers, journals and our industry-specific in-house developed models./.