Accession to the WTO: A Milestone in the History of Vietnam

Becoming member of the World Trade Organisation was the decisive follow-up of Vietnam s reform resolutions taken in 1986. Nevertheless the process of acceding the club was not a walkover but took the SRV not less than two decades, marked by seven steps: The doi-moi-resolution(1986), the normalization of her relationship with the international financial organisations (1993), the formal applying for membership to the WTO (1995), the membership of the ASEAN (1995), of the ASEM (1996) and of the APEC (1998), and the accession to the WTO (2006/07). Having achieved this final destination, Vietnam s expectations continue to be strangely mixed. On the one hand there are at least three great opportunities for the country: to join the global trade market, to absorb capital, know-how and management, and to improve its status in the international economy and politics. On the other hand Vietnam has to meet several challenges coming up in different realms: The SRV is partially afraid of becoming confronted with a disintegration of its economy: Whereas the strong secondary sector is supposed to continue to grow, the service industry and particularly the agriculture may decline at the same time. Functionally there is much concern about efficiency and competitiveness of the economy in general and about the qualification of workers and the flexibility of the state owned enterprises in particular. Last not least there remains a conceptional problem to be settled which could trouble the political leadership. The more the Vietnamese enterprises are sticking to WTO-rules, the more the authoritarian tutelage of the CPV-leadership is becoming undermined.