|
World Bank agrees on VN recovery
Positive signs of Viet Nam’s economy recovery have been emerging as a result of the Government’s stimulus efforts and the country will navigate the global financial crisis relatively well, the World Bank has said.
The bank in a yesterday’s statement said growth would reach 5 per cent in 2009, or more than 2 percentage points below the trend for the last few years.
In its half-yearly assessment of the economic performance of East Asia and the Pacific region entitled "Transforming the rebound into recovery", the World Bank said thanks to stimulus packages, GDP grew by 4.5 per cent in the second quarter and 5.8 per cent in the third, raising real GDP growth to 4.6 per cent year-on-year for the first nine months of the year.
It said the global economic recession had a significant impact on Viet Nam’s external sector. Over the first eight months of the year, dramatic declines in exports, which fell by 14.2 per cent year on year in terms of the dollar, and imports, which fell by 28.2 per cent, helped to narrow the trade and current account deficits. The account deficit is projected to be about 5 per cent of the GDP in 2009. However, the assessment warned that the actual level could be higher if the economy consolidates its current recovery.
The fiscal deficit is expected to widen to 9.4 per cent of GDP in 2009 because of substantially mounting spending for stimulus measures and the Government’s commitment to social spending.
A sizeable financial gap remained and the Government might need to reconsider its stimulus package, the bank said, adding that the main constraint to the Government’s fiscal stance stemmed from short-term financing rather than from medium-term debt.
In terms of monetary policy, the World Bank warned that low interest rates could make it difficult for the Government to issue bonds, as would the reluctance of exporters to sell their foreign currency.
The bank also said poverty levels continued to fall in Viet Nam, despite the sharp increase in food and fuel prices in the first half of 2008 and a period of sluggish growth in late 2008 and 2009.
Regionally, the report also said that developments in the East Asia and Pacific region remained strongly influenced by China. Despite Indonesia and Viet Nam performing well, developing East Asian nations, excluding China, were projected to grow at around 1 per cent in 2009 – more slowly than South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, and only slightly better than Sub-Sahara Africa.
The report said some countries had been particularly hard hit by the global crisis. Among those were Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand, which had seen their economies contract, while growth in Mongolia and some of the Pacific Islands was marginal.
vietnamnet, vietnamnews
|
