Vietnam: New "Workshop of the World"? Opportunities and Challenges

Following turbulence in 2012-2013, the Vietnamese economy seems to have recovered its momentum. Its growth rate was 6.7% in 2015 and is expected to stabilize at over 6% in 2016 despite the negative impacts of climate events on agricultural production. Further, against a backdrop of international economic stagnation, Vietnam has capitalized on China‘s loss of competitiveness and become even more intensely integrated into international value chains, especially in new segments such as telephones.But while Vietnam‘s development process over the last two decades has been impressive, it cannot be fundamentally differentiated from the overall dynamism of development in Asia. The process of convergence in particular seems to have slowed down very recently. This raises questions about the overall efficiency of the Vietnamese economic system (weakness of contribution from overall productivity of growth factors) and about the reforms needed to anticipate the limits of the current development model. This change will involve renewed interactions among the three major segments of actors "public, foreign private, and local private enterprises" as well as a rebalancing of rights in access to markets and to financing, etc.