Developing quality connective infrastructure and logistics is crucial to lower trade costs and boost Vietnam’s further integration in both global and domestic markets.

Mr. Ousmane Dione, World Bank Country Director for Vietnam, discusses the growth in Vietnam's economy in 2019 and the prospects for 2020.

In 2020, the country’s domestic demand is set to benefit from generally supportive financial conditions amid low inflation and robust capital flows.

Investors will enjoy more favourable conditions with regards to starting a business, tax, credit access, and investment protection in 2020 buoyed by the Vietnamese government’s latest action plans.

With the market warming up at the end of last year, the number of real estate deals has also been on the rise thanks to soaring remittances.

 Although progress has been realised by Viet Nam in recent years, the country is still unable to finance all the needs of its hungry productive sector, including private firms and SOEs.

The Global Infrastructure Facility (GIF)’s Governing Council has approved 1.5 million USD in funding for the World Bank (WB) and Vietnam to carry out the Solar Pilot Auction Programme, the WB said on December 18.

The sluggish disbursement of public investment is attributable to the combination of three major factors.

Vietnam’s economy has performed well in 2019, with GDP expanding by an estimated 6.8 percent, public debt reduced by almost 8 percentage point of GDP since 2016, and a trade balance surplus for the fourth year in a row.

Remittances to HCMC are expected to reach some $5.3 billion in 2019, a year-on-year surge of 9 percent, according to Deputy Director of the State Bank of Vietnam’s HCMC branch Nguyen Hoang Minh.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) remains a major shareholder of Vietinbank with a nearly 6.5% stake.

Vietnam has made considerable progress in terms of providing access to credit to become one of the top 25 global performers, according to the newly-released Doing Business Report 2020 produced by the World Bank.

The outlook for Vietnam’s business environment remains positive but further digitalisation and streamlining of the administrative system are required, a World Bank expert has said.

Growth in developing East Asian and Pacific economies is expected to slow from 6.3% in 2018 to 5.9% in 2019, and to 5.7% and 5.6% in 2020 and 2021, reflecting a broad-based decline in export growth and manufacturing activity.

The medium-term outlook for the Vietnamese economy is broadly positive despite persistent downside risks, the World Bank (WB) said in its East Asia and Pacific Economic Update released on October 10.

The Mekong Delta province of Kien Giang needs $68.8 million to fight coastal erosion, according to Nguyen Van Tam, Director of the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Developing greener urban areas is one of the key pillars in Vietnam’s journey to sustainable development.

Indonesia’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth could slow to 4.9 percent in 2020 and 4.6 percent in 2022 amid intensifying risks such as the escalating trade tension between China and the US, according to the World Bank.

Ousmane Dione continues his talk to VietNamNet about barriers to development and the path Vietnam needs to follow to reach prosperity.

The World Bank (WB) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have called for solid steps to handle undernutrition among Vietnamese children.