According to the Bloomberg news, the large corporations as Samsung, Intel have poured money into the factories in Vietnam leading Southeast Asian countries to emerge as new tiger in Asia. After renovation in the 1980s, Vietnam\u2019s economy has grown rapidly, exceeding 7% before leveling off in recent years due to the increase in bad debt from the state sector.<\/p>\n
Not only is the Southeast Asian nation gaining ground as a cheaper manufacturing alternative to neighboring China, Vietnam is also a politically palatable destination for Japanese firms boosting investment in the region amid recurring China-Japan spats.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is quite possible that Vietnam could become the fastest-growing economy in Asia,\u201d said Vikram Nehru, a senior associate in the Asia Program and Bakrie Chair in Southeast Asian Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. \u201cIt has all the ingredients for rapid growth if it can address the challenges in the state sector.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mekong Star<\/strong><\/p>\n Signs of Vietnam\u2019s growing clout are gathering: In 2014 the country overtook regional counterparts to become the biggest exporter to the US from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, muscling ahead of its more established manufacturing rivals of Thailand and Malaysia.<\/p>\n Disbursed foreign investment in Vietnam has soared in the past 14 years to reach US$12.35 billion in 2014, up 7.4 % from 2013 and compared with US$2.4 billion in 2000, figures from the Foreign Investment Agency show. Samsung\u2019s operations in the country are growing so big that it got government approval to operate its own terminal at Hanoi\u2019s Noi Bai International Airport.<\/p>\n And manufacturers are shifting from China. Japanese printer maker Kyocera Document Solutions Inc., a unit of Kyocera Corp., plans to quadruple its annual printer production in Vietnam to 2 million units by March 2018, the company said this month. Part of its operation in China will be moved to Hai Phong, making Vietnam the company\u2019s biggest manufacturing base for printers, with another plant planned by August, it said.<\/p>\n \u201cVietnam will displace Thailand as the greater Mekong star,\u201d said Tim Condon, head of Asia research at ING Groep NV, referring to the Mekong River basin region that includes the nations of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, along with China\u2019s Yunnan province.<\/p>\n Exports from Thailand, one of the nations dubbed by analysts and the media as a rapidly developing tiger economy before the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, have contracted in the last two years. By contrast, Vietnam in 2014 saw its shipments overseas jump almost 14 %.<\/p>\n Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. this month upgraded Vietnam\u2019s GDP forecast to 6.5 % for this year and next, citing strengthening retail sales, accelerating industrial production and improving construction. \u201cThe economy\u2019s structure is shifting, it is moving from agriculture to manufacturing,\u201d said Victoria Kwakwa, the World Bank\u2019s country director for Vietnam. \u201cYou can see there is a progression happening.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Big Winner\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cVietnam is really the big winner from China losing its competitiveness because of rising wages\u201d and a strong currency, said Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economics research in Hong Kong at HSBC Holdings Plc. \u201cBy moving very early into the space vacated by China, Vietnam has first-mover advantage and it is now starting to show.\u201d<\/p>\n Vietnam\u2019s annual real gross domestic product growth could average 5.3 % in the 2014-50 period, a pace only bettered by Nigeria, according to PwC\u2019s \u201cThe World in 2050\u201d report. Growth in China may fall below 4 %. Vietnam’s benchmark stock index has climbed 5.5 % this year, compared with Indonesia’s 4.1 % increase, Malaysia’s 2.4 % and Thailand’s 2.2 %.<\/p>\n Demographics are a big help. Some 13 % of China\u2019s population in 2012 was already 60 or older, compared with 9 % in Vietnam, according to the United Nations. More than 40 % of Vietnam\u2019s population of about 90 million in 2013 was in the labor force aged 15 to 49, government data show.<\/p>\n The average monthly wage in Vietnam was US$197 in 2013 compared with US$391 for Thailand and US$613 for China, according to International Labour Organization calculations. That disparity is widening. The Economist Intelligence Unit predicts that in 2019, manufacturing labor costs per hour in China will be 177 % of those in Vietnam, up from 147 % in 2012.<\/p>\n Bad Loans<\/strong><\/p>\n John Hawksworth, one of the authors of the PwC report, said that lenders in Vietnam are creaking under bad loans, and the government has struggled to overhaul inefficient state-owned companies. Inadequate infrastructure, skills gaps and corruption remain risks. Vietnam ranked 119 out of 175 countries and territories in the 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index. China came in at 100th place. Meanwhile, other Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines and Malaysia are also competing to win manufacturing jobs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not guaranteed that Vietnam will fulfil its potential,\u201d said Hawksworth. \u201cPart of it is that Vietnam is simply in a good geographic location and part of it is that it does have some catching up to do in terms of GDP per capita.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of the work being transferred to Vietnam is in low-end manufacturing as China moves up the value chain: labor-intensive work in textiles, garments, furniture and electronics. Meanwhile, China is gradually improving value. \u201cThe productivity of Vietnam\u2019s manufacturing sector is very low,\u201d Karel Eloot, Shanghai-based director at McKinsey & Co.\u2019s Asia Operations Practice, said in November. \u201cThat\u2019s the biggest blowback for further expansion in Vietnam.\u201d<\/p>\n However, the government is working on some of the economy\u2019s biggest millstones. Vietnam will attempt to sell a record amount of shares in state-owned companies this year, a deputy general director of the finance ministry\u2019s corporate finance department, said in an interview March 13. The plan to sell stakes in about 280 entities this year is \u201ccredit positive\u201d for banks, Moody\u2019s Investors Service said.<\/p>\n There are other positives. Vietnam is in talks on a free trade deal with the European Union and is part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.<\/p>\n Source: Dan Tri newspaper<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" According to the Bloomberg news, the large corporations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-16"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizlawyer.vn\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizlawyer.vn\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizlawyer.vn\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizlawyer.vn\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizlawyer.vn\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizlawyer.vn\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizlawyer.vn\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizlawyer.vn\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizlawyer.vn\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizlawyer.vn\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}