According to the General Statistics Office (Ministry of Planning and Investment), Vietnam's economy in nine months of 2015 took place in the context of more volatile global markets, debt crisis in Europe showing no sign of cooling, China's economic slowdown; and declining prices of some key agricultural products of Vietnam. In particular, crude oil prices continued to deeply decrease, affecting negatively oil-exporting countries, including Vietnam.
However, the economy recovered strongly, achieving higher growth rates than planned and higher than the previous forecast. GDP in the 1st Quarter grew by 6.12%; by 6.47% in the 2nd Quarter; by 6.81% in the 3rd Quarter. The sector of agriculture, forestry and fishery rose 2.08%; the sector of industry and construction rose 9.57%; the sector of service rose 6.17%. Of the agricultural, forestry and fishery sector, the forestry achieved a highest growth of 7.89%; the fishery increased by 2.11%; the agriculture by 1.77%.
Table: GDP growth in nine months 2011 - 2015 (unit: %)
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
5.76
5.1
5.14
5.62
6.5
With this growth path, annual GDP could reach 6.5%, the highest in eight years.
The main reason is the "godmother" of the "Set of 3 indicators” of manufacturing growth as stated above.
Industrial Production Index (IPI) in nine months of 2015 rose 9.8% from the similar period last year of which the mining and quarrying grew by 8.2%; the manufacturing by 10.2%; the power generation and supply by 11.4%; the water supply and sewage treatment by 7.3%.
Compared to nine months of 2014, the industrial production index increased by 9.8%, the highest growth rate since 2011, which was the first year the GSO replaced the production value of industry by the IPI in Vietnam). In the following chart, in years of 2012, 2013, 2014 IIP increased progressively but spiked in nine months of 2015.
The growth of the two sectors of manufacturing and the power generation and supply is higher than the overall growth rate of the whole industry (10.2% and 11.4% respectively), support to the trend of IIP growth will continue in the coming time.
The coal industry, despite difficulties caused by natural disaster, with the big effort of the whole sector, reached the higher growth than the same period last year. Clean coal production is estimated at over 30.6 million tons, up 5.1%; of which, volume of the Vietnam National Cool - Mineral Industries Holding Corporation Limited is estimated at 26.8 million tonnes, up 7.1% over the same period.
Consumption index of the whole manufacturing in nine months of this year increased by 13.2% from 2014’s same period, higher than annual growth of the same period of recent years (8.9% in 2014, 10.1% in 2013 and less than 6% in 2012 and 2011).
Stock index for the entire manufacturing continued to remain low, as of 1st September 2015 rose 9.9% over the same period last year, low than the rate of 1.7% over the same period last year; and comparing to the highest rate reached on 1st, January, 2013 (21.5%), the index in September, 2015 dropped by more than half.
Contribution of sectors to GDP growth in 9 months 2015
(Unit: percent points)
The sharp increase of three indicators including IIP index, consumption index and inventory index of the manufacturingis supporting the strong growth of the nine months’ GDP. Particularly, the manufacturing achieved higher growth, contributed to 1.58 percent point in GDP growth of the country. This is the highest contribution compared to others sectors including the agriculture, forestry and fishery contributing 0.56 percent points, the industry and construction: 3.35 percent point and the services: 2.59 percent point. About the structure of economy in nine months of this year, the agriculture, forestry and fishery accounted 16.30%; the industry and construction accounted for 33.09%; the service represented 40.52%; product taxes less subsidies on production took 10.09%.
One of hottest issues in nine 9 months is that total export turnover reached nearly 120.7 billion, up only 9.6% compared with the same period of 2014 compared to the growth rate of more 10% in recent year. What are the reasons for bad results?
Compared with commodity prices in 2014, prices of exports in 9 months decreased very sharply. For the group of fuels and minerals, reduction in prices of key commodities such as crude oil, petroleum and mineral resources has reduced turnover of 3.38 billion dollars (nearly equal to the $ 3.9 billion turnover in real current)
Another obstacle to the country's exports is the historic floods in late July and early August causing a decrease of over $ 330 million of coal exports. Similarly, the drought also makes coffee and pepper exports plummeted over $1 billion.
In sum, the fluctuations in price and volume quantity export of the agricultural products and mineral fuels led to the total decrease of $ 4.2 billion in the export value of the whole country.
Excluding price factors, export growth of over 13% in 9 months, approximately a growth over the same period in 2014.
To hinder the effect of price factors on the export objective of $ 165 billion in 2015, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) has launched a series of solutions, including reviewing and assessing the legal provisions on the management of goods imports under specialized management; actively implementing trade promotion activities. Particularly in the cases of agricultural products, in addition to improving reserves, it should be enable the response against price fluctuations in the world market; pay more attention to product quality; continue to implement the temporary storage of goods in order to support export prices; support enterprises in terms of capital, banking services and boost export.