Word: vietnamization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Anthony Salzman remembers the last time Vietnam was tipped to be Asia's next tiger economy. The former antiwar protester turned business consultant was representing Caterpillar in Vietnam when the country opened up to foreign investment in the early 1990s. Back then, Hanoi's streets were filled mostly with bicycles and all fax machines had to be registered with the police, but that didn't stop international executives from packing the bar of the only foreign-run hotel in Hanoi, the Metropole, to plot their future fortunes. "In that one bar on any given night," recalls Salzman, "there were people...
...Nearly a decade later, Vietnam's economy is sizzling, not fizzling?and investors are pouring back in, betting that the country is ready to adopt sweeping free-market reforms and open up to the world. There's a sound reason to think things are different this time. Last week, after many years of trying, Vietnam won its bid to join the World Trade Organization, a move that could help liberalize the country's economy and spark an export-driven boom similar to the boost China received after it joined the WTO in 2001. Vietnam is already on a roll...
...There's little doubt the country has a lot going for it. The workforce is educated and young?54% of Vietnam's 84 million citizens are under the age of 30. Wages are lower than they are in China's coastal cities, which compete for manufacturing jobs. The Communist Party recently installed a new government led by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who has vowed to continue economic reforms and to tackle the country's pervasive corruption. While it's true that Vietnam's economy is still relatively small?at $53 billion last year, the country's total...
...Government officials are counting on WTO entry to maintain that momentum. As the organization's 150th member, Vietnam stands to get greater access to overseas markets such as the U.S. and Europe for its agricultural and manufactured exports; by hewing more closely to free-trade policies the WTO requires of its members, it may also be able to attract additional foreign investment in everything from factories to petrochemical plants, fueling job growth. (In the first 10 months of this year, foreign direct investment in Vietnam was estimated at $6.5 billion, surpassing the $6.1 billion total for all of last year...
...that investment has a price attached. To gain WTO entry, Vietnam made greater concessions than other nations have been required to make upon joining, agreeing to lower trade barriers, reduce many subsidies and allow virtually unfettered foreign competition in some sectors of its domestic economy. "It's a tougher deal than even China got," says Jonathan Pincus, a Hanoi-based economist for the United Nations Development Programme (). For example, next April, Vietnam must allow foreign banks to set up their own branch offices in the country, without requiring them to partner with domestic lenders as banks wanting to enter China...