A red-hot economy, business-friendly policies and a Communist party led by free-traders: that’s the elevator pitch Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc is delivering to global investors amid the U.S.-China trade war.
“We are ready to grab the opportunity,” Phuc said in an interview with Bloomberg TV’s Haslinda Amin, a few days before departing this week to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Vietnam is quietly positioning itself as a safe haven for manufacturers wary of getting caught in the crossfire of the tariff war between the U.S. and China. With a raft of free trade agreements, relatively cheap labor and close proximity to China, Phuc has a good story to tell global executives he’ll meet in Davos.
“We are trying to increase exports in both quantity and quality of our products, especially in which we have advantages, such as seafood, commodities, footwear and electronics,” Phuc said. “We aim to become an export economy that can grow fast and provide more jobs with higher income for our people.”
Nonetheless, the Southeast Asian nation is yet to see a flood of companies moving in from China, he said. And the economy has some serious challenges to overcome: inadequate infrastructure and lack of skilled workers make it difficult to attract manufacturing beyond assembly-line work such as garment stitching.
Global economic conditions are also worsening. The U.S.-China trade war and more subdued world growth is weighing on export demand, a threat to an economy like Vietnam where trade accounts for about twice the nation’s gross domestic product -- more than any country in Asia apart from Singapore. About a quarter of Vietnam’s total trade is with China.
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