Vietnam a high-income nation within 20 years: VinaCapital exec

If Vietnam maintains its GDP growth rate of 6.23%, it will become a high-income country by 2043 with a per-capita income of $12,000, says Brook Taylor, CEO of Asset Management at VinaCapital.

Taylor shared this assessment at the “Makeover” conference organized by Talentnet, a human resource consultancy, in Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday.

He said the Vietnamese economy has seen positive changes of late including a tourism revival. The number of international visitors to Vietnam this year is expected to reach 70% of the level in the pre-Covid-19 period.

Vietnam has also implemented several measures to support GDP growth, he added.

However, the world was facing many challenges including recession, climate change and conflicts. Vietnam was not immune to these developments. Its real estate sector was struggling, exports were down and domestic demand was down, Taylor said, adding that these were issues of concern for Vietnam.

The world's purchasing power has affected Vietnam's exports. Inventories in the U.S., Vietnam's largest export market, have also had great impacts on Vietnam's exports in recent times. Fortunately, inventories in the U.S. have decreased recently. Specifically, U.S. inventories in July were just 4% higher than the same period last year.

Taylor estimated Vietnam’s GDP growth in 2024 at 6.5%. He said production and exports were likely to recover, with manufacturing, which accounts for 27% of GDP, growing 8-9% in 2024.

Vietnam was on an industrialization path, just as many economies have done over the last 150 years, including the UK in the late 19th century, the U.S. in the early 20th century, Japan in the 1960s, Taiwan (China) in the 1980s, and South Korea in the 1990s, Taylor noted.

He said the country’s current economic growth was being driven by several factors including a manufacturing shift from China, demographic changes and urbanization, utilization of natural resources and agricultural wealth, and digitalization.

Taylor said that Vietnam's average GDP growth over the past 20 years was around 6.23% and that if this was maintained, Vietnam could become a high-income country with a per-capita income of $12,000.

Andy Ho, general director of VinaCapital's Investment Council, had said at the 2023 Investor Conference earlier this month that more foreign investors were coming to Vietnam now because they felt more confident about developments in the Vietnamese market and economy.

Ho said the economy had many bright spots, including GDP growth. Vietnam's GDP growth rates of more than 8% in 2022 and an estimated 4.7% in 2023 make for an average 6.5% in two years, which is the highest in the world, he noted.