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WTO: now the hard work begins (17/11)

06/08/2010 - 179 Lượt xem

But, Vietnam’s entrepreneurs have long lamented that the lack of predictability of the investment environment made them hardly be able to “understand themselves” let alone their rivals.
How could they define long-term business strategies if they frequently had to confront puzzling laws? How could they understand their competitors if they had to keep guessing what preferential treatment the government would grant to state-owned enterprises whenever problems arose?
But, WTO membership means Vietnam will have to follow the transparent and strictly enforced rules of the game, which should lift private firms out of these very fatal problems.
From a wider view, WTO rules will act as a mirror for the country to look at itself and understand its position so as to make rational adjustments and get ready for competition in a brave new world where integration prevails and becomes indispensable.
WTO membership, which Vietnam has laboured hard to attain after almost 12 years, should ultimately benefit Vietnam’s economy and its people by increasing access to foreign markets, raising foreign investment and strengthening the country’s ability to defend its interests in trade disputes.
will have to undertake painful restructuring and adjustments. Service sectors such as telecom, banking, insurance, distribution and retail, where foreign corporations with great expertise and financial strength were previously kept out, will pose the greatest challenges to domestic companies.
But, these painful changes now should help Vietnam get potential future pains out of the way were it not to continue reforms. WTO enforcement will be the driving force, the pressure and also the condition for

Vietnam

to introduce more radical reforms, and at a quicker pace.
“This is a very exciting time. Vietnam’s huge effort to meet the quite demanding requirements for WTO accession should send a strong and positive message to the foreign business and policy communities.
At the heart of this message is that Vietnam is serious about continuing its commitment to high socio-economic growth based increasingly on market principles and international integration,” said Steve Parker, project director for the US AID-funded Star Vietnam Project.
Being a member of the WTO is an outcome of the nation’s two-decade long reform process, a milestone of this process, not a destination. To what extent WTO adhesion will build up a story of development success for Vietnam, only time will tell. But wherever there are reforms, there will be benefits for the nation. And the success of Vietnam’s doi moi policy over the past 20 years is the best illustration of this precept. Vietnam has moved from hyperinflation and chronic food insecurity to macro-economic stability and exportable surpluses. The country’s GDP is growing at the second highest rate in the world, around 8 per cent, after its behemoth neighbour, China.
ADB country director Ayumi Konishi recently called Vietnam “the star of Southeast Asia” and the United Nations has praised the country’s poverty reduction as “impressive”. Merrill Lynch, in its latest report, once more inspired local residents and surprised foreigners with its bullish comments, which are spreading like wild fire.
“Despite having written extensively about Vietnam since the start of 2006, we are even now being shocked by the rate of change that is occurring during each subsequent trip,” the investment bank said.
Markets are bursting with goods. Small businesses are springing up everywhere. Bikes are being traded in for BMWs and local consumption thirst, largely due to disposable income increases, is giving rise to luxury villas and shopping complexes.
Notably, over the past two years, the Vietnamese government has made a host of breakthrough laws to bring itself in line with WTO rules. There are new investment and enterprise laws that treat foreign and domestic companies equally, anti-corruption laws that include rules obligating state officials to declare assets as an instrument to crack down on corruption, and intellectual property rights law.
While the potential concern is how these laws will be enforced, as ‘words often speak louder than action’, the government’s willingness to head for changes even in the most sensitive areas, like asset declaration, denotes that there will be no steps backward.
WTO membership can help Vietnam sustain a high rate of growth through production for export markets. This in itself will help the country continue to reduce poverty.
But improving social equality in the post-WTO era, like anywhere else, will be a great challenge for Vietnamese leaders and policy makers. Vietnam should promote economic growth based on improvement of the people’s living standards, efficient use of resources and environmental pollution reduction. A sense of humanity in the business environment, which abides with WTO rules, must prevail, where the poor are not left out in the cold and enterprises are not the sole entities that benefit from integration.
As the former UNDP resident representative Jordan Ryan said, beyond economic gains, the true objective of development is the creation of a society committed to equality and social justice, one that gives every Vietnamese person the space they need to realise their full human potential.

Source: Vietnam Investment Review