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Vietnam: Striving for sustainable development in 2018

The Hanoitimes – Economic growth in 2017 has laid solid foundation for 2018 and many years to come. However, in order to maintain high and sustainable growth rate, Vietnam has to focus on measures for growth, said the Minister of Planning & Investment Nguyen Chi Dung.
Vietnam’s economy has progressed comprehensively in all fields and sectors, said Dung in a meeting with the media on the vision for 2018 on February 12. 
Specifically, GDP growth rate in 2017 reached 6.81%, higher than the target of 6.7% set by the National Assembly and becoming one of the fastest growing economy in the world. 
Along with high economic growth, Vietnam’s export has been on positive trend, in which for the first time Vietnam’s export value has exceeded US$200 billion. Meanwhile, the country has attracted foreign direct investment (FDI) of 10 year-high US$35.88 billion. 
Moreover, the number of newly established enterprises has set new record high of 127,000 with total registered capital of VND1,295 trillion (US$57 billion), increasing 15.2% in terms of the number of enterprises and 45.4% of the registered capital compared to the same period of last year. 
In particular, 2017 has witnessed significant improvement of Vietnam’s business environment, receiving recognition and appreciation from international community. 
Specifically, Vietnam’s Global Competitive Index (GCI) reached 4.4 points comparing to the 4.31 points in 2016, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s competitiveness report 2017 – 2018. 
With this result, Vietnam’s business environment has jumped to 55th out of 137 countries and regions, 5 places higher than the rank in 2016 and 20 places 20 years ago. 
Similarly, Vietnam’s the ease of doing business ranking of Vietnam has 67.93 score out of the maximum 100 score, at the rank of 68th out of 190 economies in 2017, an increase of 14 places compared to the last year, according to the Doing Business 2018 report of the World Bank. 
While Moody’s has raised the outlook of Vietnam’s banking sector from “stable” to “positive”.
Vietnam’s strong economic growth rate in 2017 has laid a solid foundation for high potential growth in 2018 and onwards, according to Dung. However, there remains shortcomings including the lack of sustainable growth, low productivity and the dependence on the FDI sector. 
To achieve high growth rate, Dung said, Vietnam has to focus on 3 main measures, including the stabilization of macro economy and putting inflation under control; restructuring the economy with productivity-based growth model and innovation; reforming the administration procedure and improving the investment environment. 
That said, macro economy stabilization is considered the priority in 2018, according to experts at the meeting reviewing Vietnam’s economic prospect in 2018 held by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM). 
As a result, Vietnam has to remain steadfast in reforming administration procedures and putting up with appropriate monetary policies in 2018. By easing credit growth, production and business can be improved in short term, but at the same time can put the economy at risks of bad debts.
On the other hand, Vietnam also has to focus on restructuring public investment to prevent inefficient use and waste in investment, said Dung. 
In 2018, the country has to step up effort in reforming administration procedures and improving investment environment. As Vietnam is in need of large capital for investment, while the state budget is limited. 
For this reason, Vietnam can only attract domestic and foreign investment on the condition of having a complete investment environment and gaining trusts among investors.   
Source: http://www.hanoitimes.vn/economy/2018/02/81E0C1DD/striving-for-sustainable-development-in-2018/