Asean and EU: Love is in the air
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But, moving toward free trade has never been purely beneficial, and engaging in FTAs presents enormous challenges eu asean trade balance by country the country, which is developing rapidly but with high vulnerability to external shocks and low risk management capacity. The social and environmental impacts can also be detrimental. To make the most of the export opportunities to the EU market, the co-authors pointed out, Vietnam would need a suitable export strategy with joint efforts from enterprises, business associations and the Government.
The Government and business associations should establish a competitive business environment, and identify feasible and effective means of support. Besides, the timing for signing such an FTA is also worth considering. Long historical relationship between the concerned countries has given rise to and sustained current socio-economic relationship.
ASEAN-EU bilateral trade has recently experienced a steady growth, reaching 4 percent per annum on average in In addition, the ASEAN in general and Vietnam in particular are exhibiting a dynamic growth pattern, resting on radical domestic reforms and pro-active international economic integration. Vietnam has in fact made enormous socio-economic achievements thanks to, among others, pro-active economic integration.
Yet this experience by no means ensures further socio-economic successes when the country signs more multilateral and bilateral eu asean trade balance by country deals. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 then describes the general impacts of those trade agreements and integration, focusing on the years after Vietnam becomes member of the World Trade Organization WTO.
The Section also discusses some major challenges in economic integration process of the country thus far, related to the contents of EU-ASEAN FTA, including financial stability, intellectual property rights, and food security. Section 4 eventually draws out the conclusions and makes several policy recommendations. Notwithstanding its application in earlyVietnam had not yet started its eu asean trade balance by country negotiations until January From then on to mid, the country has held and concluded the bilateral talks with 27 WTO Member countries concerned.
Towards the end of Octoberthe country has also finalized multilateral negotiations with the Working Party. In NovemberVietnam was then accepted as the th Member country of the WTO, with its commitments to be implemented from January 11, Together with other APEC Member economies, Vietnam participated in the Bogor declaration in with commitments to reduce tariff and other trade barriers.
Specifically, Vietnam is to achieve free trade and investment for Asia-Pacific countries by Bogor Goals. The agreements under the ASEAN framework are more comprehensive, with commitments covering all products and services, and other trade-related provisions.
Within the scope of ASEAN agreement, after its accession inVietnam is also committed to trade and investment liberalization. At the bilateral level, Vietnam has concluded bilateral trade agreements BTAs with about eighty countries, of which the Vietnam-US and Vietnam-EU trade agreements are of particular importance.
The Vietnam-EU trade agreement in July provides for sustained dialogue, and cooperation in the trade and commercial sectors, with particular emphasis on intellectual property rights, environmental protection, drug control and general trade facilitation. Inthe EU also decided to eliminate all quotas on textiles and clothing products originating from Vietnam.
Meanwhile, the Vietnam-US bilateral trade agreement was signed inwhere Vietnam and US agreed to grant each other market access, national treatment and MFN status. In addition to reducing tariffs on a broad range of products of interest to U. Both exports and imports have risen at impressive paces, with the average growth rate eu asean trade balance by country the former being slower than that of the latter.
Exports went up dramatically from over USD 9. In the same period, meanwhile, imports rose from just under USD Faster growth of imports relative to exports, therefore, led to an almost continuous increase in trade deficit.
Such a deficit went down from over USD 2. Export, import, and trade balance of Vietnam, Unit: The value of merchandize exports in and reached USD The export growth was due more significantly to various factors other than the enhanced market access under WTO framework. An export growth rate of The export growth rate of Excluding the effect of rising prices of major products such as rice, crude oil, coal, coffee, rubber, etc.
Figure 2the total value of merchandise exports in only grew by less than 14 percent. Moreover, monthly export fell significantly in the 4th quarter of due to the impact of global eu asean trade balance by country crisis which led to a substantial reduction of commodity and oil prices as well as aggregate demand.
In fact, the export growth rate in the first three quarters of was about 39 percent. The total value of merchandise import in reached USD Notably, consumer goods were making up a greater proportion in total merchandise imports, of This resulted from a eu asean trade balance by country of factors, including the increase in overall income as well as in asset-generating income wealth effectand the reduction in import tariff.
Even though such a proportion is not too large in absolute terms, attention should be given to its upward trend. In the total value of merchandise import was about USD This was the outcome of economic slowdown and the measures for restricting trade deficit appeared too large in The investment ratio, measured by total investment over GDP, was about 30 percent in The ratio increased to It then decreased to A salient feature of investment in Vietnam is that the state investment accounts for a large share of total investment, albeit going down continuously from Investment from budget includes other mobilized funds Source: The boom of private investment can be observed only till The share of private investment decreased continuously from A rise in the state investment from budget appears to have crowding out effect on private investment.
Notwithstanding their impressiveness, these figures appear to be far too small relative to that in the subsequent year. Consequently, the share of FDI rose drastically from Registered capital includes that of both newly registered and expanded existing projects. There are, however, some eu asean trade balance by country about effectiveness of the recent FDI inflows. The ratio of implemented FDI over registered FDI was only 41 percent in31 percent in and 18 percent in and much lower than the average during period In fact, the ratio between chartered capital and registered capital was only Moreover, the negative impact of the global financial crisis became apparant in the 4th quarter of The pace of new FDI registration was significantly slower and the implementation of several FDI projects, particularly large ones, was delayed.
Economic growth Supported by the achievements in exports and investment, Vietnam experienced tremendous economic growth. In the yearsgrowth has been quite robust and continuous. InGDP growth remained high at 8. The yearhowever, witnessed the fear of macroeconomic instability and global financial crisis and recession, which caused economic activities and growth to slow eu asean trade balance by country.
The economic growth rate was only 6. Accordingly, GDP growth has been largely driven by the industry-construction sector. In the yearsthe sector made up an increasing share, from over The role of the manufacturing sector has also been strengthened, as reflected by its increasing contribution from under Conversely, the agriculture-forestry-fishery saw its share declining from over Eu asean trade balance by country, the shift in economic structure exhibited some changes in The industry-construction sector experienced a decline in its share to eu asean trade balance by country Notably, the share of manufacturing appears to change in line with that of the overall industry-construction sector, whilst that of construction sector declined significantly in with the growth rate of nearly 0 percent.
Meanwhile, the share of agriculture-forestry-fishery in GDP rose to The years witnessed a boom of some services sub-sectors such as financial and retailing eu asean trade balance by country but having yet a significant contribution to real economic growth. In fact, the share of services sector as a whole attained around 38 percent GDP during Due to the rapid increase in domestic consumption over the yearsdomestic savings as a proportion of GDP experienced continuous falls from As domestic investment expanded, the domestic savings-investment gap much more than 10 percentage points kept widening, and it would be hard to be met by overseas capital in sustainable manner.
Despite a surge to over 9 percent in following the Asian monetary and financial crisis, the CPI inflation in the country continued to go down to a negative level inbefore accelerating again to over 9 percent inthen over 8 percent and 6 percent in andrespectively. CPI-based inflation, Unit: Several common causes of the rapid surge in inflation in have been identified. Firstly, expansionary macroeconomic policies for many years, whilst facilitating continuous rapid growth over the past period, have also contributed to building up dramatic pressures on inflation.
This problem was further magnified by the increase in international prices and complicated trade-offs in domestic price stabilization policy. Secondly, the massive unprecedented increase in foreign capital inflows in left policymakers with enormous perplexity, particularly in formulating policy response.
The attempt to control money supply in the second half of was ineffective and costly. Eu asean trade balance by country other measures to tighten monetary policy were implemented in the early of But the fiscal policy, to a considerable extent, eu asean trade balance by country still passive in coordinating with monetary policy.
In such a context, continuing liberalization of trade, such as via an EU-ASEAN FTA, can add further volatility to domestic macroeconomic situation and lead to associated socio-economic issues, while the capacity to formulate policy resolution remains questionable.
To seize growth and profitability opportunities, particularly after WTO accession, activities in the sector rose in number and became more diverse. The State-owned commercial banks retain their dominant role. However, the joint stock commercial banks JSCBs have acquired greater significance in relative terms, accounting for The banks also kept on opening new branches.
In another aspect, the financial system became deeper. Bymore than 70 percent of income for banks was from lending, i. Since then, banking activities have been diversified, particularly in line with the development of bank cards and retail banking. Inloans for investment in securities and real estates accounted for a relatively large share of outstanding credits of some JSCBs.
Merger and acquisition got more popular.