By Jake Maxwell Watts and Nguyen Phuong Linh
In both the developing and industrialised worlds, economic growth rates, like bad news, can be entirely relative. Vietnam’s respectable-sounding GDP growth of 5.08 per cent in 2012 was in fact a painful fall from 5.9 per cent in 2011 and marked its slowest pace in 13 years. Will 2013 be any better?
After charming emerging market investors for more than a decade, the southeast Asian country has had a bad year. High-profile corruption scandals, plummeting investor confidence and record levels of bad debt have battered the economy. In a 2013 New Year’s message to the nation, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung admitted to “shortcomings in the government’s management” and “economic structural weaknesses”. What happened to Vietnam in 2012?
Read more: http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2013/01/10/vietnams-economic-woes-where-to-from-here/#axzz2HmxOydRD
