In: Economics
During the past quarter century, Vietnam has emerged as one of Asia’s great success stories. In a nation once ravaged by war, the economy has posted annual per capita growth of 5.3 percent since 1986—faster than any other Asian economy apart from China. Vietnam has benefited from a program of internal restructuring, a transition from the agricultural base toward manufacturing and services, and a demographic dividend powered by a youthful population. The country has also prospered since joining the World Trade Organization, in 2007, normalizing trade relations with the United States and ensuring that the economy is consistently ranked as one of Asia’s most attractive destinations for foreign investors.
The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) estimates that an expanding labor pool and the structural shift away from agriculture contributed two-thirds of Vietnam’s 7 percent annual GDP growth from 2005 to 2010.1 The other third came from improving productivity within sectors. But the first two forces have less and less power to drive further expansion. According to official Vietnam statistics, growth in the country’s labor force will probably decline to about 0.6 percent a year over the next decade, down from 2.8 percent between 2000 and 2010. Given the past decade’s rapid rate of migration from farm to factory, it seems unlikely that the pace can accelerate further to raise productivity enough to offset the slowing growth of the labor force.
Instead, Vietnam should increase its labor productivity growth within sectors to achieve an economy-wide boost of some 50 percent—to 6.4 percent annually—if the economy is to meet the government’s target of a 7 to 8 percent annual GDP expansion by 2020. Without such an increase, we estimate, Vietnam’s growth will probably decline to about 5 percent annually. The difference sounds small, but it isn’t: by 2020, Vietnam’s annual GDP will be 30 percent lower than it would be if the economy continued to grow by 7 percent.
An agenda for sustaining growth
Six percent–plus annual growth in economy-wide productivity is a challenging but not unprecedented goal. The successes and failures of other countries that had to raise their productivity offer a road map for broadening the bases of its growth.
The priority for officials is to restore calm in the economy and ensure that Vietnam retains the trust and enthusiasm of national and international investors. Surging inflation, repeated currency devaluations, a deteriorating trade balance, and rising interest rates have undermined investor confidence. And Vietnam’s financial sector does appear to have a degree of fragility. Three long-term systemic risks loom—a rising volume of nonperforming loans, squeezed liquidity, and a drying up of foreign-exchange reserves. Many of the issues Vietnam faces come down to limited governance and transparency. Today, for example, the financial-reporting standards and risk-management techniques of Vietnamese banks are a long way from Basel II or Basel III standards. Laying out a clear road map for their adoption would help improve the sector’s long-term stability and viability and bolster confidence among investors.
First, Vietnam could usefully run a series of stress tests to identify struggling banks and separate them from well-performing, “safe” ones. In addition, the country could ensure that sufficient supervision is in place to intervene in banks whose portfolios are excessively risky and to consolidate weaker banks when necessary. The dual challenge of inflation and exchange rate policy must be addressed in a way that raises the confidence of investors and encourages hidden foreign reserves to come back to the official economy so they can be invested productively.
Second, to facilitate a transition to more productive activities, new sources of comparative advantage must be found, beyond low-wage labor. Vietnam has already invested significantly in infrastructure, for example, yet interviews with executives and international assessments strongly suggest that more will be necessary to support the transition to increasingly productive activities. Funding for infrastructure projects will probably be limited, so Vietnam should assess which of them offer the greatest economic benefit, linking investment decisions more closely to broader development strategies and emphasizing stronger coordination among government agencies. Tourism offers a good example. The central government can play a key role in ensuring that public-sector investment in infrastructure, transportation, and real estate is closely tied to private-sector spending in areas such as hotels, resorts, and transit services.
Third, getting economy-wide regulation right is necessary for productivity and growth but not sufficient to sustain the broad-based expansion of recent years. Vietnam’s next challenge will be to establish an enabling environment at the level of individual industries and sectors by enhancing domestic competition and helping industries to move up the value chain in, for example, software development and IT services. Areas Vietnam could target include investments to raise agricultural quality and productivity, productivity-led growth in manufacturing, and energy efficiency.
Fourth, reform in the ownership and management incentives of state-owned enterprises can be an important institutional vehicle for improving their productivity and growth. Vietnam has already established a State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC) to energize the reform of these companies and to help the economy use capital more efficiently. SCIC could consider the governance and operational approaches other countries have used to improve the performance of their public enterprises. The experiences of Malaysia’s Khazanah Nasional and Kazakhstan’s Samruk-Kazyna suggest that a sufficiently autonomous organization with the right leadership and talent can push performance standards across a portfolio of state-owned companies. Suitable moves include the creation of agencies to raise the government’s effectiveness, set ambitious reform goals, and develop strategic plans to achieve them; to attract foreign direct investment; and to manage public–private partnerships.
Achieving 6 percent–plus annual growth in economy-wide productivity is a challenging but not unprecedented goal. Nevertheless, incremental change will not achieve a revolution of this magnitude. Deep structural reforms within the Vietnamese economy and a strong and sustained commitment from policy makers and companies will be necessary (see sidebar, “An agenda for sustaining growth”). Also, many companies have prospered in Vietnam because of the country’s strong and stable growth and inexpensive, abundant labor. In the future, they may no longer be able to rely on either, so they will need to ensure that their business and financing models are sufficiently robust to withstand a period of lower growth and, perhaps, economic volatility.
The challenges facing Vietnam
In the near term, Vietnam must cope with a highly uncertain global environment. The economy faces a state of heightened risk because of macroeconomic pressures, including inflation that has built up as a by-product of the government’s efforts to maintain robust growth despite the global economic crisis. In early 2009, Vietnam’s global trade and foreign direct investment declined dramatically, and while exports have recovered, the future of these two sources of economic activity is quite uncertain. The slow recovery of the United States and Europe, together with the nuclear disaster in Japan, has created additional near-term uncertainty. In response to the global economic downturn, the Vietnamese government relied on expansive macroeconomic policies that have led not only to inflationary pressures but also to budget and trade deficits and unstable exchange rates. Some signs suggest that the financial sector is under stress, and international credit-ratings agencies have lowered their ratings on Vietnam’s debt.
In the longer term, Vietnam has a larger challenge. Since the key drivers that powered its robust growth in the past—a young, growing labor force and the transition from agriculture to manufacturing and services—are beginning to run out of steam, Vietnam now needs new sources of growth to replace them. The demographic tailwind responsible for driving a third of Vietnam’s past growth is slackening. Some companies already report labor shortages in major cities. By 2020, the share of the population aged 5 to 19 is projected to drop to 22 percent, from 27 percent in 2010 and 34 percent in 1999. Although Vietnam’s median age, 27.4 years, is still relatively young compared with that of countries such as China (35.2), its population is also aging.
According to government projections, Vietnam’s labor force is likely to grow by about 0.6 percent a year over the next decade, a decline of more than three-quarters from the annual growth of 2.8 percent from 2000 to 2010. Growth in the labor force will still make a positive contribution to GDP, but notably less than it did in the past decade. Vietnam’s growth has also been propelled by extraordinarily rapid migration from rural areas to towns—from relatively low-productivity agriculture to the relatively higher-productivity services and manufacturing sectors. Economic restructuring is unlikely to continue so quickly. Indeed, even aggressive assumptions on the pace of the transition away from agriculture would not compensate for the effects of the decline in overall labor force growth. Without an improvement in productivity growth patterns within sectors, agriculture’s share of the labor force would need to decline at twice the rate of the past decade—unlikely given the aging of rural areas and the decline of agriculture’s share of the total population, by 13 percentage points, over the past ten years.
Vietnam should identify sources of growth to replace those now becoming exhausted. Manufacturing and service industries ought to step up their productivity growth performance. Vietnam could also further develop the capabilities across all sectors, become increasingly versatile as an environment in which companies can constantly innovate and build on recent successes. Offshore services such as data, business-process outsourcing, and IT appear to be promising areas. Vietnam can establish an enabling environment at the level of individual industries and sectors by enhancing domestic competition and helping industries move up the value chain. Building on its expanded pool of university graduates, Vietnam has the potential to become one of the top ten locations in the world for offshore services. Because state-owned enterprises still have enormous importance, accounting for about 40 percent of the nation’s output, reform of their ownership and management incentives is likely to be crucial, as will the need to improve their overall capital efficiency.
As we have seen, to achieve GDP growth of about 7 percent a year, Vietnam needs to raise annual productivity growth to 6.4 percent. Without such an increase, we estimate, the glide path for Vietnam’s growth would decline to between 4.5 and 5 percent annually, significantly below the 7 percent more typical in recent years and the government’s own target, set at the 11th National Party Congress in January 2011, of 7 to 8 percent annual GDP growth to 2020. If growth indeed slows to 4.5 to 5 percent a year, the implications would be significant. By 2020, Vietnam’s annual GDP would be 30 percent (some $46 billion) lower than it could be with 7 percent annual growth. Assuming no shift in the structure of the economy as a whole, we estimate that private consumption would be $31 billion lower. Vietnam’s economy would take 14—rather than 10—years to double in size.
Implications for companies
The exposure of companies and investors to different economic growth outcomes clearly depends on whether they are active primarily in the domestic or export market. Domestically oriented companies, such as those in the financial-services or retail sectors, are much more threatened by slower growth in Vietnam than are companies that use the country as an export base for manufactured goods. Since prospects for growth vary substantially from sector to sector, each company must understand and manage its own specific problems. The expected slowing in the expansion of the labor force also has significant implications for companies. Those that view Vietnam primarily as a low-cost economy with an abundance of workers need to adjust their thinking.
Multinationals
Primarily to hedge their exposure to China, many multinational corporations have opened facilities in Vietnam (or plan to do so), without adequately assessing the prospects, both positive and negative, for expanding business in Vietnam itself. These companies should avoid locking in excess capacity—the country’s economy may not match the strong growth trends of the past—and ensure that their Vietnamese business models are sustainable even if wages rise substantially. Anecdotal and survey evidence consistently indicates that the wage cost advantage is eroding. Much as domestic and export-oriented companies must boost their productivity to be competitive, so too must multinationals, which could also engage with the government to remove barriers to initiatives that clearly benefit both sides, such as programs to increase capital intensity and improve training.
Training is especially important. Multinationals complain about a lack of basic work readiness among new recruits in both the manufacturing and service sectors. Many companies in other countries have responded effectively to this problem by providing in-house training both before an employee starts working and on the job. Surveys suggest that Vietnam has an even bigger shortage of qualified engineers and middle managers than other rapidly developing economies do. Multinational companies can work with the government and educational institutions to address this skill gap. If the Vietnamese government were to issue certificates for qualified training programs, companies might feel more confident in providing such training.
Private-sector Vietnamese corporations
Improving competitiveness and using the latest global best practices should be priorities for Vietnamese companies in the private sector. They should emphasize long-term value and bottom-line profits rather than merely seeking to increase top-line revenue. Too many domestic Vietnamese companies spend too much energy competing on price and too little on product quality, features, and branding and on developing unique offerings that can command premiums.
These companies must develop programs to recruit employees and train them so that their skills and productivity improve. They should also take a more professional approach to retaining and promoting their best workers, through incentive packages and greater management autonomy. The notion of increasing the value of each employee’s performance is not yet widely understood among major Vietnamese companies. Family-owned businesses, which remain a major part of the economy, have thus far tended to resist efforts to improve their governance.
State-owned enterprises
More limited access to capital and increasing competition mean that state-owned enterprises must lift their productivity before circumstances force their hand. Improved management and better governance could raise their competitiveness and overall growth potential. In China, for instance, the significant gains in productivity that resulted from reform within the state-owned sector led to increased profitability as well.
Vietnam’s state-owned companies will also need to recognize the gaps in their pool of talent and to recruit top-drawer, internationally trained executives to help them become more globally competitive. They will increasingly have to benchmark themselves against the best international competitors not only to measure internal operations but also to create realistic plans for expansion and product development.
In this context, the adoption of international accounting standards will support the creation of the detailed performance benchmarks required to identify areas for improvement. Many maturing state-owned enterprises will have to make hard decisions about which businesses should remain core and which should be exited because they can no longer be profitable.
Selling shares in these companies remains a focus of many policy conversations in Vietnam. But most of the sales carried out to date haven’t fundamentally tackled the efficiency problems, because the state typically remains the controlling shareholder. More aggressive steps toward fuller privatization and improvements in the governance of state-owned businesses might help them adjust more rapidly to an era of increasingly vigorous international competition.
We think Vietnam can act decisively to head off short-term risks and embrace a productivity-led agenda. If the country does so, it can build on its many intrinsic strengths—a young labor force, abundant natural resources, and political stability, to name a few—to create a second wave of growth and prosperity. There are challenges, to be sure, but we believe that they can be overcome.
During the past quarter century, Vietnam has emerged as one of
Asia’s great success stories. In a nation once ravaged by war, the
economy has posted annual per capita growth of 5.3 percent since
1986—faster than any other Asian economy apart from China. Vietnam
has benefited from a program of internal restructuring, a
transition from the agricultural base toward manufacturing and
services, and a demographic dividend powered by a youthful
population. The country has also prospered since joining the World
Trade Organization, in 2007, normalizing trade relations with the
United States and ensuring that the economy is consistently ranked
as one of Asia’s most attractive destinations for foreign
investors.
The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that an expanding labor
pool and the structural shift away from agriculture contributed
two-thirds of Vietnam’s 7 percent annual GDP growth from 2005 to
2010.1 The other third came from improving productivity within
sectors. But the first two forces have less and less power to drive
further expansion. According to official Vietnam statistics, growth
in the country’s labor force will probably decline to about 0.6
percent a year over the next decade, down from 2.8 percent between
2000 and 2010. Given the past decade’s rapid rate of migration from
farm to factory, it seems unlikely that the pace can accelerate
further to raise productivity enough to offset the slowing growth
of the labor force.
Instead, Vietnam should increase its labor productivity growth
within sectors to achieve an economy-wide boost of some 50
percent—to 6.4 percent annually—if the economy is to meet the
government’s target of a 7 to 8 percent annual GDP expansion by
2020. Without such an increase, we estimate, Vietnam’s growth will
probably decline to about 5 percent annually. The difference sounds
small, but it isn’t: by 2020, Vietnam’s annual GDP will be 30
percent lower than it would be if the economy continued to grow by
7 percent.
An agenda for sustaining growth
Six percent–plus annual growth in economy-wide productivity is a
challenging but not unprecedented goal. The successes and failures
of other countries that had to raise their productivity offer a
road map for broadening the bases of its growth.
The priority for officials is to restore calm in the economy and
ensure that Vietnam retains the trust and enthusiasm of national
and international investors. Surging inflation, repeated currency
devaluations, a deteriorating trade balance, and rising interest
rates have undermined investor confidence. And Vietnam’s financial
sector does appear to have a degree of fragility. Three long-term
systemic risks loom—a rising volume of nonperforming loans,
squeezed liquidity, and a drying up of foreign-exchange reserves.
Many of the issues Vietnam faces come down to limited governance
and transparency. Today, for example, the financial-reporting
standards and risk-management techniques of Vietnamese banks are a
long way from Basel II or Basel III standards. Laying out a clear
road map for their adoption would help improve the sector’s
long-term stability and viability and bolster confidence among
investors.
First, Vietnam could usefully run a series of stress tests to
identify struggling banks and separate them from well-performing,
«safe» ones. In addition, the country could ensure that sufficient
supervision is in place to intervene in banks whose portfolios are
excessively risky and to consolidate weaker banks when necessary.
The dual challenge of inflation and exchange rate policy must be
addressed in a way that raises the confidence of investors and
encourages hidden foreign reserves to come back to the official
economy so they can be invested productively.
Second, to facilitate a transition to more productive activities,
new sources of comparative advantage must be found, beyond low-wage
labor. Vietnam has already invested significantly in
infrastructure, for example, yet interviews with executives and
international assessments strongly suggest that more will be
necessary to support the transition to increasingly productive
activities. Funding for infrastructure projects will probably be
limited, so Vietnam should assess which of them offer the greatest
economic benefit, linking investment decisions more closely to
broader development strategies and emphasizing stronger
coordination among government agencies. Tourism offers a good
example. The central government can play a key role in ensuring
that public-sector investment in infrastructure, transportation,
and real estate is closely tied to private-sector spending in areas
such as hotels, resorts, and transit services.
Third, getting economy-wide regulation right is necessary for
productivity and growth but not sufficient to sustain the
broad-based expansion of recent years. Vietnam’s next challenge
will be to establish an enabling environment at the level of
individual industries and sectors by enhancing domestic competition
and helping industries to move up the value chain in, for example,
software development and IT services. Areas Vietnam could target
include investments to raise agricultural quality and productivity,
productivity-led growth in manufacturing, and energy
efficiency.
Fourth, reform in the ownership and management incentives of
state-owned enterprises can be an important institutional vehicle
for improving their productivity and growth. Vietnam has already
established a State Capital Investment Corporation to energize the
reform of these companies and to help the economy use capital more
efficiently. SCIC could consider the governance and operational
approaches other countries have used to improve the performance of
their public enterprises. The experiences of Malaysia’s Khazanah
Nasional and Kazakhstan’s Samruk-Kazyna suggest that a sufficiently
autonomous organization with the right leadership and talent can
push performance standards across a portfolio of state-owned
companies. Suitable moves include the creation of agencies to raise
the government’s effectiveness, set ambitious reform goals, and
develop strategic plans to achieve them; to attract foreign direct
investment; and to manage public–private partnerships.
Achieving 6 percent–plus annual growth in economy-wide productivity
is a challenging but not unprecedented goal. Nevertheless,
incremental change will not achieve a revolution of this magnitude.
Deep structural reforms within the Vietnamese economy and a strong
and sustained commitment from policy makers and companies will be
necessary . Also, many companies have prospered in Vietnam because
of the country’s strong and stable growth and inexpensive, abundant
labor. In the future, they may no longer be able to rely on either,
so they will need to ensure that their business and financing
models are sufficiently robust to withstand a period of lower
growth and, perhaps, economic volatility.
The challenges facing Vietnam
In the near term, Vietnam must cope with a highly uncertain global
environment. The economy faces a state of heightened risk because
of macroeconomic pressures, including inflation that has built up
as a by-product of the government’s efforts to maintain robust
growth despite the global economic crisis. In early 2009, Vietnam’s
global trade and foreign direct investment declined dramatically,
and while exports have recovered, the future of these two sources
of economic activity is quite uncertain. The slow recovery of the
United States and Europe, together with the nuclear disaster in
Japan, has created additional near-term uncertainty. In response to
the global economic downturn, the Vietnamese government relied on
expansive macroeconomic policies that have led not only to
inflationary pressures but also to budget and trade deficits and
unstable exchange rates. Some signs suggest that the financial
sector is under stress, and international credit-ratings agencies
have lowered their ratings on Vietnam’s debt.
In the longer term, Vietnam has a larger challenge. Since the key
drivers that powered its robust growth in the past—a young, growing
labor force and the transition from agriculture to manufacturing
and services—are beginning to run out of steam, Vietnam now needs
new sources of growth to replace them. The demographic tailwind
responsible for driving a third of Vietnam’s past growth is
slackening. Some companies already report labor shortages in major
cities. By 2020, the share of the population aged 5 to 19 is
projected to drop to 22 percent, from 27 percent in 2010 and 34
percent in 1999. Although Vietnam’s median age, 27.4 years, is
still relatively young compared with that of countries such as
China , its population is also aging.
According to government projections, Vietnam’s labor force is
likely to grow by about 0.6 percent a year over the next decade, a
decline of more than three-quarters from the annual growth of 2.8
percent from 2000 to 2010. Growth in the labor force will still
make a positive contribution to GDP, but notably less than it did
in the past decade. Vietnam’s growth has also been propelled by
extraordinarily rapid migration from rural areas to towns—from
relatively low-productivity agriculture to the relatively
higher-productivity services and manufacturing sectors. Economic
restructuring is unlikely to continue so quickly. Indeed, even
aggressive assumptions on the pace of the transition away from
agriculture would not compensate for the effects of the decline in
overall labor force growth. Without an improvement in productivity
growth patterns within sectors, agriculture’s share of the labor
force would need to decline at twice the rate of the past
decade—unlikely given the aging of rural areas and the decline of
agriculture’s share of the total population, by 13 percentage
points, over the past ten years.
Vietnam should identify sources of growth to replace those now
becoming exhausted. Manufacturing and service industries ought to
step up their productivity growth performance. Vietnam could also
further develop the capabilities across all sectors, become
increasingly versatile as an environment in which companies can
constantly innovate and build on recent successes. Offshore
services such as data, business-process outsourcing, and IT appear
to be promising areas. Vietnam can establish an enabling
environment at the level of individual industries and sectors by
enhancing domestic competition and helping industries move up the
value chain. Building on its expanded pool of university graduates,
Vietnam has the potential to become one of the top ten locations in
the world for offshore services. Because state-owned enterprises
still have enormous importance, accounting for about 40 percent of
the nation’s output, reform of their ownership and management
incentives is likely to be crucial, as will the need to improve
their overall capital efficiency.
As we have seen, to achieve GDP growth of about 7 percent a year,
Vietnam needs to raise annual productivity growth to 6.4 percent.
Without such an increase, we estimate, the glide path for Vietnam’s
growth would decline to between 4.5 and 5 percent annually,
significantly below the 7 percent more typical in recent years and
the government’s own target, set at the 11th National Party
Congress in January 2011, of 7 to 8 percent annual GDP growth to
2020. If growth indeed slows to 4.5 to 5 percent a year, the
implications would be significant. By 2020, Vietnam’s annual GDP
would be 30 percent lower than it could be with 7 percent annual
growth. Assuming no shift in the structure of the economy as a
whole, we estimate that private consumption would be $31 billion
lower. Vietnam’s economy would take 14—rather than 10—years to
double in size.
Implications for companies
The exposure of companies and investors to different economic
growth outcomes clearly depends on whether they are active
primarily in the domestic or export market. Domestically oriented
companies, such as those in the financial-services or retail
sectors, are much more threatened by slower growth in Vietnam than
are companies that use the country as an export base for
manufactured goods. Since prospects for growth vary substantially
from sector to sector, each company must understand and manage its
own specific problems. The expected slowing in the expansion of the
labor force also has significant implications for companies. Those
that view Vietnam primarily as a low-cost economy with an abundance
of workers need to adjust their thinking.
Multinationals
Primarily to hedge their exposure to China, many multinational
corporations have opened facilities in Vietnam , without adequately
assessing the prospects, both positive and negative, for expanding
business in Vietnam itself. These companies should avoid locking in
excess capacity—the country’s economy may not match the strong
growth trends of the past—and ensure that their Vietnamese business
models are sustainable even if wages rise substantially. Anecdotal
and survey evidence consistently indicates that the wage cost
advantage is eroding. Much as domestic and export-oriented
companies must boost their productivity to be competitive, so too
must multinationals, which could also engage with the government to
remove barriers to initiatives that clearly benefit both sides,
such as programs to increase capital intensity and improve
training.
Training is especially important. Multinationals complain about a
lack of basic work readiness among new recruits in both the
manufacturing and service sectors. Many companies in other
countries have responded effectively to this problem by providing
in-house training both before an employee starts working and on the
job. Surveys suggest that Vietnam has an even bigger shortage of
qualified engineers and middle managers than other rapidly
developing economies do. Multinational companies can work with the
government and educational institutions to address this skill gap.
If the Vietnamese government were to issue certificates for
qualified training programs, companies might feel more confident in
providing such training.
Private-sector Vietnamese corporations
Improving competitiveness and using the latest global best
practices should be priorities for Vietnamese companies in the
private sector. They should emphasize long-term value and
bottom-line profits rather than merely seeking to increase top-line
revenue. Too many domestic Vietnamese companies spend too much
energy competing on price and too little on product quality,
features, and branding and on developing unique offerings that can
command premiums.
These companies must develop programs to recruit employees and
train them so that their skills and productivity improve. They
should also take a more professional approach to retaining and
promoting their best workers, through incentive packages and
greater management autonomy. The notion of increasing the value of
each employee’s performance is not yet widely understood among
major Vietnamese companies. Family-owned businesses, which remain a
major part of the economy, have thus far tended to resist efforts
to improve their governance.
State-owned enterprises
More limited access to capital and increasing competition mean that
state-owned enterprises must lift their productivity before
circumstances force their hand. Improved management and better
governance could raise their competitiveness and overall growth
potential. In China, for instance, the significant gains in
productivity that resulted from reform within the state-owned
sector led to increased profitability as well.
Vietnam’s state-owned companies will also need to recognize the
gaps in their pool of talent and to recruit top-drawer,
internationally trained executives to help them become more
globally competitive. They will increasingly have to benchmark
themselves against the best international competitors not only to
measure internal operations but also to create realistic plans for
expansion and product development.
In this context, the adoption of international accounting standards
will support the creation of the detailed performance benchmarks
required to identify areas for improvement. Many maturing
state-owned enterprises will have to make hard decisions about
which businesses should remain core and which should be exited
because they can no longer be profitable.
Selling shares in these companies remains a focus of many policy
conversations in Vietnam. But most of the sales carried out to date
haven’t fundamentally tackled the efficiency problems, because the
state typically remains the controlling shareholder. More
aggressive steps toward fuller privatization and improvements in
the governance of state-owned businesses might help them adjust
more rapidly to an era of increasingly vigorous international
competition.
We think Vietnam can act decisively to head off short-term risks
and embrace a productivity-led agenda. If the country does so, it
can build on its many intrinsic strengths—a young labor force,
abundant natural resources, and political stability, to name a
few—to create a second wave of growth and prosperity. There are
challenges, to be sure, but we believe that they can be
overcome.