Vietnam’s economy is forecast to grow 6.2 percent this year, helped by a manufacturing and building boom.
The Vietnamese General Statistics Office yesterday said that this year’s growth rate is below last year’s rate of 6.7 percent, but is still considered a success given unfavorable global trends, as well as a spate of natural and environmental disasters.
The southern Mekong Delta, the nation’s main rice growing region, earlier this year suffered the worst drought and saltwater intrusions in nearly a century.
Toxic chemicals dumped into the sea in April by a steel complex in central Ha Tinh Province, owned by a unit of Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), devastated the region’s fishing and tourism industries.
Natural disasters caused 18.3 trillion dong (US$813 million) of damage, the statistics office said.
The Vietnamese government routinely issues an estimate for GDP growth before the end of the year. A notice on the statistics office’s Web site said industrial output and construction grew at a sizzling 7.6 percent pace, while services expanded by 7 percent, accounting for a slightly larger share of the growth.
Exports rose 8.6 percent from the previous year to US$175.9 billion, while imports totaled US$173.3 billion, it said.
The World Bank in a report earlier this month said the Vietnamese economy remains resilient, thanks to robust domestic demand and export-oriented manufacturing.
It said Vietnam’s medium-term outlook remains favorable, with GDP expected to expand by 6 percent this year.
However, the nation of 93 million has a way to go in developing strong monetary and financial policies, leaving it vulnerable to global downturns.
Vietnam’s manufacturing sector has gained from the nation’s participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade pact led by the US.
US president-elect Donald Trump’s opposition to the plan poses a risk to the foreign investment that had been flooding into Vietnam in hopes of gaining preferential access for exports to the US and other TPP markets, such as Japan.
“Vietnam still has work to do to ensure macroeconomic health to weather potential shocks,” Oxford Economics’ Beatrice Tanjangco said in a report.
“International trade has led Vietnam to prosper over the past few years, but it also made it more vulnerable to global risks,” she said.
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