Though international organisations continuously downgrad their global growth forecasts for this year, many have maintained their projection that Vietnam’s GDP growth would be the highest in Southeast Asia.

The General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam cited the World Bank’s recent report showing that global growth is forecast to slump from 5.7% in 2021 to 2.9% in 2022, a figure which is 1.2% below projections made in January. 

This decline can largely be attributed to the damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the negative spillovers from the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Simultaneously, the World Bank projections for this year’s growth have been revised down for several key global economies. The United States’ growth is anticipated to drop 1.2% to 2.5% compared to the January forecast, while growth in the Eurozone, Japan, and China is forecast to shrink by 2.5%, 1.7%, and 4.3%, respectively.

Meanwhile in Southeast Asia, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has forecast that GDP growth rates of Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia would be at 5.0%, 6.0%, 3.0%, 4.3%, and 6.0%, respectively, while that of Vietnam is expected to be the highest at 6.5%.

The Asian bank attributed the strong recovery of the Vietnamese economy in the post-pandemic period to high COVID-19 vaccination coverage, the shift to a more flexible pandemic containment approach, expanding trade, and the enforcement of the Government’s Economic Recovery and Development Programme (ERDP).

Furthermore, the ERDP’s monetary measures will provide additional liquidity to the economy through an expected reduction in the lending rate by 0.5% to 1.0% through credit institutions over this year and next year, with the continued implementation of these measures until 2024.

The State Bank of Vietnam has set the annual target growth rate for credit at 14%. Reaching this target will be aided by interest rate cuts and revived credit demand from businesses.

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