TOKYO, May 15 (Bernama-BUSINESS WIRE) — While Viet Nam — one of the poorest nations in the world in the 1980s — has become today a market-based and remarkable growth economy, the fact that the country creates little value added from exports (US$69 billion in 2019) that is equivalent to only one quarter of nominal value of exports of goods and services (US$260 billion), poses many strategic challenges to Viet Nam’s development, says the study by the ASEAN-Japan Centre on Global Value Chains in ASEAN: Viet Nam [https://www.asean.or.jp/en/centre-wide-info/gvc_database_paper11/], released today.
Massive foreign direct investment (FDI), in particular export-processing FDI in Viet Nam means that the country has become a favoured destination for export-processing production. Although gross exports of Viet Nam are growing, the contribution of domestic value added exports (i.e. value added created domestically in Viet Nam exports) to the national economy is small, accounting for only 12 per cent of GDP, compared with the ASEAN average of 33 per cent.