Vietnam's night-time economic activities lack diversity and are small in scale, with a focus on food and night markets, or small pedestrian streets.

The industrial production index went down in November with the decline of both mining and manufacturing industries. This is a big surprise in the context of stable global and domestic demand.

Vietnam has gained certain achievements in completing the market mechanism, and adjusting the corresponding role of the State in the economy.

Vietnam’s resources are scarce and are not being used efficiently, experts say.

“We think that in 2020-2022, Vietnam may face negative impact from the trade war instead of short-term positive impact, ” said Tran Toan Thang from the Centre for Socio-Economic Information and Forecast (NCIF).

Vietnam could drop out of the Top 20 economies of global growth. Is this because Vietnam is going more slowly or the world is going faster?

Vietnam's GDP growth rate is expected to surpass the target and reach 6.8-7 percent.

Though they are optimistic about the economic performance in the first nine months of the year, economists still warn that in the long term,m Vietnam’s economy may be influenced by a global recession.

Vietnamese income has improved significantly, but it has not reached the $3,000per capita threshold as calculated by General Statistics Office, economists say.

VietNamNet Bridge - While giving different predictions about Vietnam’s GDP growth rate in 2019, institutions all agree that Vietnam will have to face high risks in the time to come.

Expected to account for 33 percent of Vietnam’s population by 2020, the middle class is  a major contributor to the country’s development, according to Phung Duc Tung, head of the Mekong Development Institute.

Despite several obstacles, Vietnam’s exports met and surpassed the targets set by the National Assembly and Government in 2017. 

ADB (Asian Development Bank) has predicted a 6.8 percent GDP growth rate for Vietnam in 2018, a figure which is much higher than the average growth rate in the region.

The head of the Vietnam Economics Institute, Tran Dinh Thien, is not optimistic about the foreign invested enterprise sector (FIEs), though it is considered the brightest spot in the economy. 

While government officials and some economists are optimistic about economic performance this year, other analysts say growth is unsustainable because it relies too much on the foreign-invested economic sector.

VietNamNet Bridge - The gap between the top 20 percent of the richest people and the lowest 20 per cent of the poor in Vietnam was 4.4 times in 1993, but the figure was 10 times in 2016. 

VietNamNet Bridge - Analysts from SSI (Saigon Securities Incorporated) believe that Vietnam may have 30 businesses with capitalization value of over $1 billion by 2018.

VietNamNet Bridge - The government still insists on a 6.7 percent GDP growth rate target this year, though economists warn it will be out of reach.

Labor-intensive industries such as mining and agriculture are no longer expanding, according to Nguyen Duc Thanh, Director of the Vietnam Institute for Economic and Policy Research (VEPR).

VietNamNet Bridge - Though skeptical about the 6.7 percent GDP growth rate target, economists still believe Vietnam will be among Asia's fastest growing economies.