Vietnam remains Southeast Asia’s bright star: ASEAN specialist

Vietnam remains a “bright star” of the Southeast Asian region despite power shortages and a weakened realty market last year, according to Kai Wei Ang, an ASEAN economist at BofA Securities Inc., which was previously the Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

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In a recent talk on CNBC’s Squawk Box, he laid a stress on Vietnam’s advantages, including a competitive labor market, and a wide range of signed free trade agreements (FTAs) that facilitate its exports, describing them as fundamental support for the Southeast Asian country to lure investments.

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Mentioning the power imbalance last year which was due to scorching weather, he said the Vietnamese authorities have learnt from the experience and made better preparations while carrying out more pre-emptive approaches with hope to prevent the repeat of the shortages.

The specialist highlighted that Vietnam has been a bright star in the region regarding foreign direct investment (FDI) attractions over the past decade, adding foreign investors funneled more than 11 billion USD into the country from the beginning of the year to May 20, and some 8.25 billion USD was disbursed during the time span, up 2% and 7.8% year-on-year, respectively.

Source: VNA