Economic pundits optimistic about growth in 2018

Last year, for the first time in many years, all the 13 goals set by the National Assembly were reached or surpassed, including the GDP growth of 6.81%, the highest-ever trade value of US $ US$425 billion, and the record foreign direct investment inflows of over US$33.

Speaking to our reporter, Associate Professor, Doctor. Tran Hoang Ngan, member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Team, highly valued the efforts to build an enabling Government of action and transparency, contributing  to the above achievements.

The Government showed how attentive they were in order to timely address obstacles faced by the business community, which forced ministries, central agencies and localities to run faster in a more effective way, he said.

Doctor Huynh The Du, Academic Director of the Fulbright Economic Teaching Program, attributed high growth in 2017 to an “attentive Government”.

Specifically, last year’s growth was mainly buoyed by robust performance of key areas including agriculture (up 2.9%); industry and construction (up 8%); and services (up 7.44%).

Du said bottlenecks on administrative procedures were eliminated, opening up wide doors for export and import activities meanwhile trade surplus helped stabilize the domestic currency.

Better economic indicators helped to stimulate social investment and foreign investment inflows to Viet Nam, he added.  

Du predicted that it would remain stable as positive trends will still prevail in 2018, thus external impacts on Viet Nam’s economy may not be remarkable.

Sharing Du’s comment, economist Vu Dinh Anh expressed his belief that Viet Nam’s growth would be better than 2017.  If the Government could manage well public debts, pressure on the economic machine would be lessened.

Though the Government set a cautious growth goal of 6.7% this year, many economists believed that the economy may expand 6.8% based on the current macroeconomic foundation, he added.

However, to realize the goal of 6.7%, the Government needs to double efforts to soon fix “bottlenecks”, including weak State owned enterprises and non-performing loans, and business cost reduction, according to  Associate Professor Tran Hoang Ngan.

Ngan also stressed the necessity to quicken the establishment of special zones like Van Don, Bac Van Phong and Phu Quoc in order to stimulate economic growth.

The 2018 landscape could be consolidated as Viet Nam jumped 14 places to 68^th among 190 economies, according to the World Bank Doing Business 2018 report.

Meanwhile, Viet Nam’s competitiveness ranked 55^th in the World Economic Forum’s Competitiveness Report./.

By Khanh Phuong