Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Date:         Fri, 22 Jan 1993 10:30:39 -0500
              USENET." <VIETNET@USCVM.BITNET>
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      NEWS/VN: VN faces long uphill road to modernisation

01/19

VIETNAM FACES LONG UPHILL ROAD TO MODERNISATION

    By Moon Ihlwan
    SINGAPORE, Jan 20, Reuter - Vietnam will have to wait for more than a
decade before it can join the economic mainstream of its capitalist neighbours
even after a U.S. embargo is lifted, a senior UN official said on Wednesday.
    Michael Meixner, director of the United Nations Industrial Development
Organisation (UNIDO) for Vietnam, told Reuters he expects a rush of U.S.
investment once the embargo is removed, as is widely anticipated. That will be
followed by more Japanese and European participation, he said.
    But infrastructural bottlenecks and bureaucratic obstacles will prevent
major projects from taking off early, he said.
    "The major impact on increasing the gross national product will probably be
seen four to six years after investments are really coming into the country in
a large scale," he said.
    Washington imposed trade sanctions on Hanoi, then the capital of North
Vietnam, in 1964 and extended them to all of Vietnam in 1975 when the
communists defeated the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government and reunified
the country.
    The United States persuaded other Western and non-communist countries to
adhere to the embargo after Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978. The Vietnamese
have since withdrawn.
    Meixner, in Singapore for a Vietnam investment conference, said he had
confidence in the success of Vietnam's economic reforms but "it takes more time
than most think."
    He brushed aside as "exaggerated optimism" speculation that Vietnam's
economy would develop fast enough to join the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) soon. ASEAN is a grouping of Hanoi's six capitalist neighbours
Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines.
    Vietnam last July signed ASEAN's 1976 treaty of amity and cooperation,
which requires signatories to respect each other's territorial integrity and
settle disputes peacefully.
    It also attends ASEAN meetings as an observer but Singapore's Senior
Minister Lee Kuan Yew said in an interview this week the Vietnamese economy
should become more compatible with those of other members to join the group.
    Meixner drew parallels between the integration of former east and west
Germany and Vietnam's possible ASEAN membership.
    "The prognosis is that it would be in the order of 15 years for the east
German economy to come up to the west German level. If you really put in a lot
of efforts to make Vietnam comparable with the level of Thailand now, it will
take at least 15 years," he said.
    Vietnam aims to increase per capita annual income from $200 at present to
$500, well below a third of that in Thailand now, by the year 2000.
    "In eastern Germany, you have a free flow of information, goods, people and
knowhow. All these favourable conditions are not available in Vietnam," Meixner
said.
    Vietnam's Deputy Foreign Minister Le Mai said on Monday the World Bank and
the Intenational Monetary Fund (IMF) were ready to provide soft loans needed to
improve his country's infrastructure once the U.S. trade embargo was lifted.
    Meixner said he believed Hanoi would get a maximum of $5 billion from the
world bodies by the year 2000 while it needed about $20 billion to put a sound
infrastructural system in place.
    "(The) $5 billion will only remove bottlenecks," he said. A two-lane
1,800-km (1,100-mile) highway planned by Hanoi alone would cost between $3
billion and $4 billion and take at least four to five years to build.
    Meixner said Vietnam would benefit from its rich natural resources,
including coal, iron, bauxite, ilmenite, tin, gold phosphate and metal
deposits.
    Vietnam also offered abundant cheap labour but regulations that the
government's service bureau pick and provide all workers to companies caused
delay and inefficiency, he added.
    "Vietnam has probably the largest phosphate reserves in the Pacific basin,
a proven reserve of approximately one billion tonnes. Vietnam could become a
major producer of phosphate fertiliser in the Asia Pacific region," Meixner
said.