With its outstanding achievements over the past three decades, Vietnam is a development success story and continues to perform well even in the pandemic on a range of indicators, including trade, growth and human capital, Victoria Kwakwa, Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific at the World Bank, has said.

Addressing the third Vietnam Reform and Development Forum (VDRF 2020) themed “Vietnam: Actions to Recover Growth towards Inclusiveness and Sustainability”, Kwakwa stressed that there is notable room for further improvements in global value chain (GVC) development to meet Vietnam’s ambitious long-term development goal of becoming a high-income country by 2045 and narrow the development gaps with the advanced economies. According to her, Vietnam’s participation in global and regional value chains remains limited, despite being “one of the most open economies in the world”. In the medium term, being well-prepared for the “new normal” of GVCs is important. Supply chains cannot be established overnight, and companies still have to overcome the expensive and time-consuming process of relocation.
In the longer term, Vietnam needs to narrow the productivity gap and move towards the productivity frontier. For Vietnam, emphasis need be placed on skills development and R&D capacity building, as well as effective implementation of VNs breakthrough on institutional reform.
Vietnam needs to be prepared for the future shift in GVCs and mitigate potential adverse impact of accelerated adoption of technology on labor markets.

Source: vietnamplus