The static economic benefits of Vietnam's accession to the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) are likely to be relatively small. The gains from increased access to ASEAN markets would be small, and they would be offset by the costs of trade diversion on the import side. But binding commitments on protection rates under the AFTA plan could provide an important stepping stone to more beneficial broader liberalization.
The static economic benefits of Vietnam's accession to the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) are likely to be relatively small. The gains from increased access to ASEAN markets would be small, and they would be offset by the costs of trade diversion on the import side. But binding commitments on protection rates under the AFTA plan could provide an important stepping stone to more beneficial broader liberalization. Vietnam's accession to the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) has been an important step in its integration into the world economy. Fukase and Martin use a multiregion, multisector computable general equilibrium model to evaluate how different trade liberalization policies of Vietnam and its main trading partners affect Vietnam's welfare, taking into account the simultaneous impacts on trade, output, and industrial structure. They conclude that: - The static economywide effects of the AFTA liberalization to which Vietnam is currently committed are small. On the import side, the exclusion of a series of products from the AFTA commitments appears to limit the scope of trade creation, and the discriminatory nature of AFTA liberalization would divert Vietnam's trade from non-ASEAN members. - Vietnam's small initial exports to ASEAN make the gains from improved access to partner markets relatively modest. Since Singapore dominates Vietnam's ASEAN exports and initial protection in Singapore is close to zero, there are few gains from preferred status in this market. - When Vietnam extends its AFTA commitments to all of its trading partners on a most favored nation basis, its welfare increases substantially - partly because of the greater extent of liberalization, partly because the broader liberalization undoes the costly trade diversion created by the initial discriminatory liberalization, and finally because of the more efficient allocation of resources among Vietnam's industries. - AFTA, APEC, and unilateral liberalizations affect Vietnam's industries in different ways. AFTA appears to benefit Vietnam's agriculture by improving its access to the ASEAN market. - Broad unilateral liberalization beyond AFTA is likely to shift labor away from agriculture and certain import-competing activities toward relatively labor-intensive manufacturing. Reduced costs for intermediate inputs will benefit domestic production. These sectors conform to Vietnam's current comparative advantage, and undertaking broad unilateral liberalization now seems a promising way to facilitate the subsequent development of competitive firms in more capital- and skill-intensive sectors. By contrast, more intense import competition may lead some import substitution industries (now dependent on protection) to contract. - The higher level of welfare resulting from more comprehensive liberalization implies that the sectoral protection currently given to capital-intensive and strategic industries is imposing substantial implicit taxes on the rest of the economy. All the above suggests that AFTA should be treated as an important initial step toward broader liberalization. Binding international commitments in AFTA and, in due course, at the World Trade Organization can provide a credible signal of Vietnam's commitment to open trade policies that will help stimulate the upgrading of existing firms and investment in efficient and dynamic firms. This paper - a product of Trade, Development Research Group - was prepared as part of the AFTA Expansion Project in collaboration with the East Asia and Pacific Region.
Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: International Organisations, grade: 1,3, King s College London, course: The Business Environment in the Asia-Pacific, 15 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This book analyses and evaluates the question, in how far the creation of the Asian Free Trade Area (AFTA) brought economic benefits to the ASEAN country Vietnam. To evaluate this question the impacts of AFTA on Vietnam's trade and their foreign direct investment (FDI) are evaluated and in a further step the question analysed in how far AFTA can affect the government income revenues of Vietnam. For the analysis of AFTA's impact on Vietnams' trade, the trade structure of Vietnam will be analysed. In general it can be said that for Vietnam the accession to AFTA is a very important step in their transition process to a more market economy. Furthermore it is a major step in Vietnams' integration in the world economy. Especially the access of Vietnamese firms to a huge market such as ASEAN seems to be very advantageous. In the case of foreign direct investments, the question is if AFTA is seen by foreign firms and investors as a positive factor which would lead to investments in Vietnam or if it does not change the situation or if it has even a negative impact on the FDI due to the reason that the industries are not protected anymore by the tariffs and quotas. A further question to analyse is the origin of the FDI, this means if the major part comes from the ASEAN countries or if it has also any effects on other countries. This book primarily targets researchers and readers interested in organisations and the Vietnamese economy.
Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) approaches have been used extensively over the past 25 years to analyze government and other policies for both developed and developing countries. Advances in methodology, computation techniques and data availability, including Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) data, have allowed researchers to use CGE models to study the potential policy impacts of tax, trade, environmental issues, etc. at the urban and regional levels as well as the macro level. What is common with these policy topics is that they cause structural, long-term impacts, including price changes and income growth, on various entities (households, enterprises, government and other regions/countries) and industrial sectors of economies. CGE modeling can compute a new equilibrium of each industry's market clearance upon the incorporation of such a policy shock, and evaluates the policy alternative as compared with the benchmark equilibrium in terms of industrial sector-wise and aggregated prices, outputs, GDP and many other indicators.
Against the backdrop of significant developments in regional economic cooperation and integration over the past decade, this book presents some of the key challenges facing ASEAN as it embarks on a bold and ambitious project to establish an ASEAN Economic Community by 2015. Organized under the auspices of the ASEAN-Australia Development Cooperation Program's Regional Economic Policy Support Facility, the book brings together authoritative studies written by prominent experts and academics on issues pertaining to ASEAN economic integration.
A comprehensive collection of writings from economists of Vietnamese origin. Topics covered include macroeconomics, microeconomics, education, international trade, communication, income distribution and poverty measurement.
During the last two decades, Vietnam has been undergoing a process of deregulating economic activities and integrating into the global economy. The passing of the Enterprise Law in 1999, which facilitated the establishment of private enterprises, and the achievement of membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2007 were two of the landmark events in Vietnam's rapid growth over this period. In order to cope with such a socioeconomic and institutional transformation, Vietnam's domestic economic entities have employed various measures, including technical upgrading, a shift into new areas of business, the diversification of capital acquisition, the adoption of new models of corporate governance, and other measures. As a result, the reorganization of Vietnam's domestic economic entities, such as the equitization of many state-owned enterprises, the emergence of large-scale private enterprises and the revitalization of rural entrepreneurs have taken place in many areas. This book attempts to analyze economic activity in Vietnam, covering a variety of types and sizes of Vietnam's domestic economic entities from large-scale stateowned enterprises to micro-scale rural entrepreneurs.
Taking a developmental approach, this book critically reviews Vietnam's reform process and shows how the country’s reform agenda is still dominated by a ‘developmental orthodoxy’ inspired by a post-Washington consensus. The author argues that a wider debate is needed in order to give national policy makers the full spectrum of alternatives to support well-informed policy decisions. In particular, the book indicates that two issues central for any analysis of the Vietnamese development reform process are substantially underdeveloped in the current scientific debate: the experience of the East Asian developmental state and the question of socialism. Presenting a way of thinking about Vietnam that goes beyond the orthodox, the book sets out the various paradigms through which the Vietnamese economy can be analyzed. This is a welcome addition to the literature and will appeal to both practitioners working in the field and the academic community in Southeast Asian studies, economics and development.
