Vietnam’s economic growth could reach 6.13-6.48%: think tank

Vietnam’s economic growth could reach between 6.13% and 6.48% in 2024, higher than the 5.05% achieved last year, according to two scenarios announced on Monday by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), a think tank under the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

In the lower-growth scenario, the country’s export revenue would increase 4.02%, leading to a trade surplus of $5.64 billion, and inflation would rise to 3.94%. Meanwhile, in the second scenario, the respective figures are 5.19%, $6.26 billion, and 3.72%.

Tran Thi Hong Minh, director of the CIEM, attributed the figures to the many remaining challenges facing the global economy this year. However, Vietnam could perform well by improving its institutional updates.

She also highlighted global challenges in 2023, including the lingering Ukraine-Russia conflict, climate change, monetary tightening in key economic partners, and the Gaza conflict. 2023 also witnessed many technological breakthroughs, including artificial intelligence (AI), which Vietnam embraced well, she emphasized.

CIEM experts noted that the economic recovery in 2023 accelerated in the latter half of the year. The slow growth of 6.2% of the economy’s investment was an indicator of economic hardships, partly due to negative global and domestic impacts.

Amid the challenges, foreign direct investment (FDI) growing 32.1% year-on-year to $36.6 billion last year is a positive sign, according to the CIEM.

Reviewing the implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the CIEM said Vietnam’s utilization of the pact’s preferential policies was low at 0.67%. However, some experts pointed out the RCEP overlaps with many other free trade agreements (FTA), such as the FTA between ASEAN and its partners.

Vietnam’s GDP grew 5.05% year-on-year to $430 billion in 2023, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO). The figure is higher than the 2.91% posted in 2020 and 2.58% in 2021, the two peak years of the Covid-19 pandemic; but lower than the 8.02% in 2022, the post-pandemic period, and 7.02% in 2019, the pre-pandemic period.