Author: Long S. Le, University of Houston
The IMF’s World Economic Outlook suggests the ‘miracle’Asian economies have been resilientpost-financial crisis, whereas the US and Europe are still experiencing lacklustre growth. The newer ‘miracle’ economies of Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand (known together as ‘MIT’) demonstrate that other countries with no development for over a generation might well be able to create Confucius, Islamic and Buddhist forms of modernity.
The new cycle of economic growth in these Southeast Asian tigers has been accompanied by a measure of economic and political freedom, and brought with it a relatively high standard of living. Read more…
Author: Long S. Le, University of Houston
The competitive advantage of Southeast Asian countries in the 21st century will be about the ability of their governments to create a national environment in which skilled human resources are born, but in which social, political, and economic entrepreneurs are permitted to compete fairly.
As Southeast Asia enters this new round of growth and modernization, perceptions of China and tendencies toward regional integration will become increasingly relevant to the effectiveness of Beijing’s ‘charm offensive’, and its capacity to consolidate power. Read more…
Author: Long S. Le, University of Houston
Since the doi moi (‘renovation’) reforms, the Vietnamese Government surprisingly is able to confront the fact that corruption can have detrimental effect on many aspects of economic development, such as reducing GDP growth rates and greater income inequality.
In fact, the government recently had to respond to foreign aid donors’ concern over calculation return on investment, when Japan in December 2008 briefly suspended low-interests loans of about $1.1 billion annually to Vietnam, amid a corruption investigation. Read more…
Author: Long S. Le, University of Houston
Vietnam’s economy is showing resiliency. The country’s GDP has rebounded to 5.76 per cent in the third quarter, whereas the economy grew 3.9 per cent in the first half of this year. Opportunely, the Vietnamese government forecasts that the economic growth in the fourth quarter will be more than 6.5 per cent, meaning that an annualized GDP growth of 5.2 per cent is attainable for 2009.
Although the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has recently adjusted its annual growth forecast for Vietnam from 4.7 to 4.5 per cent, the ABD forewarns that the Vietnamese government needs ‘to strike a balance between stimulating growth through demand-side measures and safeguarding macroeconomic stability.’ Read more…
