Viet Nam Joins Wto Today, 11 January 2007

[mouse]

VIET NAM JOINS WTO TODAY, 11 JANUARY 2007...Viet Nam informed the WTO on 12 December 2006 that it had ratified its

membership agreement. It becomes the WTO's 150th member on 11 January 2007.

Source:[email protected]

Mods feel free to move to News posts after confirmation.

[chownah]

Interesting...what does it mean?

Chownah

[Rinrada]

About time ...they have been going on about it for long enough....but will they comply?

Could be a lot of opportunities oop there (north) and it makes a nice change from LOS....must go on a jolli from Chiangers sometime...

Just spoke to a company that a friend of mine was commuting with...ie London-Hanoi -London.(lost touch)....and heard that he has opened up a school teaching young Viets English before they go to Auz...????? ....gotta go and look-see....

Sin Chao......

To join the global trade club, Vietnam has committed itself to scrapping many subsidies and tariffs and passed scores of laws in areas from corporate and investment law to accounting rules and copyright protection.

But while new laws are now on the books, many remain poorly understood or enforced by officials and bureaucrats whose thinking is still steeped in the rules of the Soviet-style command economy.

Vietnam has been "on a steep learning curve with respect to understanding what a market economy is all about", said Carl Thayer, a Vietnam expert with the Australian Defence Force Academy.

The communist party politburo, he said, "is basically a conservative body without real experience in managing and regulating the economy. There has been changed thinking on the part of only a few."

Only a decade ago "Vietnam's leaders realized they could not control the economy with directives and discovered the mechanism of demand and supply," said Doan Viet Dai Tu, of the investment and consulting group Openasia.

But at its five-yearly party congress in April, they maintained the concept of a "market economy with socialist orientation," in which the state keeps a leading role.

Vietnam first started talks to join the WTO in early 1995, when it reopened its doors to the world, but the road has been rocky since.

"There's been a learning process going on inside the party," said the UN Development Programme's chief economist in Vietnam, Jonathan Pincus.

"There was a lot of optimism in the early stages that this would happen very quickly," he said.

"But the (1997) East Asian financial crisis really affected the whole region ... There was a strengthening of the anti-integration forces within Vietnam then."

A turning point came in 2001 when then US president Bill Clinton signed a trade deal with Hanoi. Vietnamese exports to the United States soared from 500 million dollars to six billion dollars per year between 2001 and 2005.

"Vietnam really demonstrated that they are a competitive exporter, and that really turned the argument," said Pincus.

"Even the former critics of integration, the go-slow camp, said 'actually, we can probably do this.'"

Change has been rapid since, but is about to speed up further.

Under its WTO entry deal, Vietnam will have to allow more foreign companies to compete on its home turf, threatening many state owned enterprises (SOEs).

"The hardest thing for Vietnam to accept was the opening up of so many sectors of its economy to potentially 100 per cent foreign ownership," said Thayer.

"The reality remains that the state-owned sectors still received preferential treatment via bank loans. SOE equitisation has only proceeded in fits and starts."

Vietnam's leaders have stressed that the country must learn what it means to be part of the WTO as laid out in a 900-page accession document.

"It has been a long education process, and still a lot of people don't know what it means in term of legal commitments," said lawyer Fred Burke with Baker and McKenzie in Vietnam.

"The negotiating team from the ministry of trade have become world class experts in WTO negotiations," he said.

"The question is how much that went beyond that small group.

There is a gap there between the WTO principles and the general perception in the mind of many Vietnamese leaders."

Also been welcomed by Uncle Sam.....

[PhilHarries]

What does this mean?

Well, potentially, Viet Nam is the tunnel at the end of Thailand's light.

I've been working on a Vietnamese project, Dung Quat Refinery, for more than a year now in Paris and now Kuala Lumpur with trips so far only to Ha Noi. I can say that the people are some of the most genuinely friendly people I've met in Asia however they are, due to the buerocracy, some of the most difficult. No matter, they are getting their act together and their joining the WTO should be a great spur to their economy.

Viet Nam is cheaper than Thailand so manufacturing and tourism will be their boom businesses and obviously there will be opportunities for westerners to make a living in the country, as many are already doing so. Infrastructure will take a while to catch up with demand, I've no experience in the south but Ha Noi airport has all of nine gates, but give them time.

In the mean time Thailand seems determined to go backwards while TAT continues with it's meaningless straight line predictions of increased tourism. Ostriches, sand and heads spring to mind.

Oh well, couple of months and it'll be Quang Ngai for me but if things aint great there's still a 3 x weekly service Da Nang - BKK by PB Air.