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HA NOI (Biz Hub)— Major economic changes have to be initiated if Viet Nam is to take due advantage of opportunities generated as the country expands and deepens its international integration process, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung said yesterday.
Addressing at a Ha Noi workshop on economic opportunities and challenges facing the country, Dung said maintaining macroeconomic stability and speeding up economic growth will continue to be top priority over the next five years as the nation strives for sustainable development.
Economists at the workshop predicted that the world economy is likely to face numerous difficulties and challenges in the coming years. Therefore, they said, the Vietnamese should focus on containing inflation and keeping growth at a reasonable rate in line with both domestic and international developments.
Associate Professor Nguyen Van Thanh of the National Centre for Socio-economic Information and Forecasting sketched out two likely scenarios for the Vietnamese economy over the next five years.
In the first one, with the growth model changing slowly and State management not improving significantly, Viet Nam would maintain its growth rate at 6.5 percent and inflation at 6.7 percent, with investment/GDP ratio reaching 13 to 14 percent.
In case the country shifts faster to a new growth model and takes full advantage of bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements and State management improves considerably, the growth rate can reach 7.1 per cent, inflation kept at 7.21 per cent and investment/GDP ratio can improve to 15.3 per cent.
Dung concurred, highlighting the importance of speeding up economic restructuring as well as adopting a new growth model while making the economy more competitive.
Other workshop participants called for increasing the application of scientific and technological advancements to production and stressed the need for training to ensure that the nation has a highly skilled workforce to meet developmental challenges. — VNS