The Hong Kong and Sanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) has forecast in a newly-issued report that Vietnam is expected to achieve a 5.5% growth rate of GDP in 2013.
The sharp fall in food sales would help to slow inflation in March
According to the report on Vietnam’s macro economy, the higher GDP growth is attributed to improved domestic demand, higher foreign investment and stable overseas remittances.
The report also indicated that the sharp fall in food sales would help to slow inflation in March, offering favourable conditions for the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) to lower interest rates in the Open Market Operations (OMO) in March by 50 points to 6.5%. HSBC also predicted that the SBV would cut an additional 50 points in the second quarter of this year.
HSBC said that Vietnam’s retail revenues had returned to medium growth in the past, but was tending to grow slower. The country’s export value would increase, and was forecast to contribute to 90% of the national GDP by 2014.
HSBC experts believed that Vietnam is indeed making steady progress in building the foundations for more reforms, taking the restrained support for inefficient enterprises in recent years as one example, and the stability of inflation and key economic indicators such as the balance of trade and the foreign reserves as another.
The Vietnamese government has targeted the GDP growth of 5.5% in 2013 compared to the rate of 5.2% in 2012.
