Long way for Vietnam’s economy to catch up with Thailand
Vietnam may catch up with Thailand, Southeast Asia’s leading economy, within 25 years if it further strengthens its reforms to improve the business environment, a Japanese businessman has said.
Atsugi Mise, a member of the Executive Board of Sumitomo Shoji Machinex, was among over 100 Japanese businesses who attended a workshop on Vietnam's business environment held in Tokyo Wednesday.
He highlighted Vietnam's political stability and reform policy as major factors for its economic development.
He also made mention of Vietnam’s advantages in geography, natural and human resources and legal and infrastructural systems which, he said, were improving.
However, Mise called on the Vietnamese government to further reform its economic structures, first of all targeting State-run enterprises so as to make them operate efficiently.
He also emphasized the need for Vietnam to speed up upgrading the legal system and the infrastructural network, crack down on corruption, invest more in vocational training to produce a skilled workforce, and pay attention to environmental protection.
If all these works were done, Vietnam may catch up with Thailand, the leading economy in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), within just 25 years, the Japanese businessman said.
Addressing the workshop, the Director of the Institute on Research of Vietnamese Economy, Teruioshi Kubota, expressed his belief that Vietnam would maintain its political stability, continue undergoing great changes in the renewal and international integration process.
As the new leadership in Vietnam continued to consider Japan a reliable partner and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung was expected to visit Japan soon, relations between the two countries would further develop, the director said.
Vietnam News Agency - September 14, 2006.
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