WNAM Monitoring: 2023 continues to be a tough year for the world economy as COVID-19 pandemic has still taken heavy tolls while a series of new challenges have emerged, including geopolitical conflicts, tight monetary policies in major economies and world economic slowdown.
According to experts and international media, Vietnam’s economy has shown resilience, stability, and readiness to overcome difficulties to become one of the economies with positive growth rates in the world.
In its latest report, the Asian Development Bank revised Vietnam’s economic growth forecast to 5.2 percent in 2023 and expected its 2024 figure to remain at 6 percent.
However, ADB believed that Vietnam’s growth rate is quite good compared to many countries in the region. The bank said that a weaker-than-expected recovery in external demand continues to hamper industrial and services growth, slowing Vietnam’s recovery in employment and domestic consumption but prudent and proactive monetary policy will help control inflation. The inflation in Vietnam is forecast at 3.8 percent in 2023 and 4 percent in 2024.
In an article released in November 2023, Bloomberg Economics said Vietnam is among five economic ‘connectors’ in fragmenting world, along with Poland, Mexico, Morocco and Indonesia. The five countries are benefiting from the reshuffling of supply chains in response to escalating geopolitical tensions. They are strategically positioned to capitalize on the shifting dynamics within global supply chains.
According to Bloomberg Economists, these five countries account for 4 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) but have attracted more than 10 percent of foreign direct investment, or USD 550 billion, of all new investment projects since 2017. Earlier, Bloomberg also said that the fast-growing economy has made Vietnam an attractive land for startups.
Commenting on Southeast Asia, global governance consulting firm McKinsey said that Southeast Asia is a bright spot in the picture of global economic slowdown, with a group of countries achieving high economic growth rates in the third quarter of 2023, including Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam.
According to McKinsey, external conditions and weak demand for export goods in Southeast Asia have slowed regional growth in Q3. Vietnam’s exports of manufactured goods also faced many challenges due to reduced demand in key markets such as the European Union and the US.
However, domestic demand, government spending and the recovery of the service sector, especially tourism, contributed to better employment and income prospects, which in turn supported growth, especially in the Philippines and Vietnam. According to the General Statistics Office (GSO), Vietnam’s economy in the third quarter of 2023 increased by 5.33 percent year-on-year, as compared to a growth of 4.14 percent in the previous quarter.
Meanwhile, market news site Yahoo!finance published an article saying that Vietnam, China and some Asian countries are among the 20 countries with the fastest economic growth in the world in the past 10 years, based on IMF data.
