Author: Vo Tri Thanh

For Vietnam, and other East Asian economies, inflation is not a real issue in 2009. Instead, East Asian economies will have to pay more attention to the inflationary issue in 2010, and the governments of South Korea, China, and Indonesia will likely apply tightened monetary policies in the first or second quarter of 2010.

Vietnam shares similarities with these other East Asian countries; however, our macroeconomic situation in the past year was less stable than other East Asian economies. These past instabilities, relating to inflation, the financial system, the balance of payments, and the exchange rate, may place Vietnam in a more vulnerable position than other countries. So far, the inflation rate over the first seven months of 2009 has been rather low, at 3.2 to 3.3 per cent. However, the rate on a monthly basis is higher than that of the previous year. In addition, credit growth is also high, at 16 to 17 per cent during the first half of 2009. All these issues have raised fears over the possibility of inflation.

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Author: Vo Tri Thanh, CIEM, Hanoi

There is still a great deal of uncertainty about how the world will come through the current financial and economic crisis. All countries formulated strategies to cushion the effects of the crisis and implemented national and cooperative measures to stabilize their financial systems. And we are grasping for a paradigm for the world economy that will sustain growth and development after the crisis.

The world economy has changed radically since the turn of the century. It was shaken by a series of major ‘virtual’ crises – the dot com crisis, the energy and food crises and non-traditional security issues like terrorism and SARS – that created an undercurrent of uncertainty, teetering on instability, before the present crisis hit . Economic and financial risks also increased due to global macro-imbalances, which are in turn associated with the process of deepening globalization and integration, and the emergence of a number of big new developing players such as China, India, and Brazil.

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Author: Vo Thi Tranh

Economic reforms, international economic integration and Vietnam’s accession to the WTO by the end of 2006 all resulted in a boom of investment, trade and financial and banking activities in Vietnam.

Just one year later, the focus has moved from high expectations about Vietnam’s development to pessimistic assessments of Vietnam’s macroeconomic instability.

The period from March to July 2008, in particular, saw a worsening of the macroeconomic situation, the extent of which is a topic of much debate.

There are two main camps. The first believes that Vietnam was in currency or financial crisis, even before the globe went under. Read the rest of this entry »