News Room - Business/Economics

Posted on 17 Mar 2009

Vietnam moves to restructure economy

The Ministry of Planning and Investment is working with relevant agencies to plan the economy’s restructuring in the context of the global economic slump, newswire VietNamNet reported on Saturday.

 

What will be an overview of the current local economic situation, trends, warnings, and proposals to restructure the economy should be delivered to the government by the end of this month.

 

Vietnam targets economic growth of 6.5 percent this year. Its economy expanded 6.2 percent in 2008, the slowest pace in nine years.

 

The global economic crisis gives Vietnam a great opportunity to restructure its economy, Dau Tu newspaper quotes Tran Dinh Thien, acting head of the Vietnam Institute of Economics, as saying.

 

The downturn has revealed that existing products and technologies are outdated, so new products and technologies need to be introduced, Thien said.

 

“Vietnam should look into this issue and rejudge market demand,” he said.

 

Economist Le Dang Doanh agrees, saying that rejudging global market demand to restructure production is a matter of serious concern as Vietnam’s export revenue has accounted for 70 percent of gross domestic product.

 

“We export 95 percent of our coffee output and 90 percent of our pepper. So we cannot consume all coffee and pepper production by looking inward,” Dau Tu newspaper quotes Doanh as saying.

 

“We have to calculate global demand again in a bid to avoid widespread growing and then chopping down [of commercial plants].”

 

Both Thien and Doanh said that regulatory reform by the government would be vital to restructuring the economy.