Vietnam falls to 65th in global competitiveness

Regional News

HCMC – Vietnam falls six places from last year to 65th out of 142 economies in the annual competitiveness ranking by the World Economic Forum (WEF) due to numerous long-standing challenges, including infrastructure.

According to the global competitiveness report 2011-2012 issued by the Geneva-based forum, Vietnam’s competitiveness assessment declines because the country loses ground in 10 of the 12 pillars of the global competitiveness index (GCI). It, however, made a significant improvement in the macroeconomic environment (65th, up 20 places), which helps limit its fall in the rankings.

“The 2010 budget deficit was still too large, at 6% of GDP, and inflation moved back to near double-digit levels after briefly receding the year before,” says the report.

“Going forward, Vietnam will have to build on its strengths while addressing the economy’s numerous challenges. Among its competitive strengths are its fairly efficient labor market (46th) and its innovation potential (66th) given its state of development, including its relatively large market size (33rd), which benefits from a particularly large export market.”

However, there are still numerous challenges for the country, making Vietnam drop six places in the rankings. The major challenge is infrastructure with particular concerns about the quality of roads (123rd) and ports (111th) despite some improvement in recent years.

The next is education that is said to be more improved in terms of quality, but enrolment rates at all levels remain low – 64th, 103rd, and 110th for primary, secondary, and tertiary enrolments, respectively.

Besides, regulation is perceived as burdensome (113th), with the number of procedures (9 procedures, 94th) and time (44 days, 119th) required to start a business making this a cumbersome process. In addition, there are concerns regarding the level of intellectual property protection (127th) and, to a lesser extent, the respect of property rights (98th).

Finally, corruption is considered frequent and pervasive (104th).
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By: Tran Thu
Source: The Saigon Times, Sept. 8, 2011
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