Publication: How Deep Was the Impact of the Economic Crisis in Vietnam?: A Focus on the Informal Sector in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City
Date
2010-12
ISSN
Published
2010-12
Author(s)
Cling, Jean-Pierre
Chi, Nguyen Huu
Razafindrakoto, Mireille
Roubaud, Francois
Abstract
Vietnam is one of the only South East
Asian emerging economies not to have gone into recession in
2009 in the wake of the world crisis. Nonetheless, it has
been affected deeply by the crisis, as shown by all
macro-economic indicators. The yearly growth rate of Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) has been slowing down from 8.5
percent in 2007 to 6.3 percent in 2008 then 5.3 percent in
2009, before recovering to 6.5 percent in 2010. Overall,
because of productivity gains and rapid growth of the labour
force due to the 'demographic dividend' which is
currently peaking, an average economic growth of 7.5 percent
such as attained during 2000-2008 is hardly sufficient to
absorb new entrants on the labour market. Even with such a
high growth rate, around one fourth of new entrants end up
in the informal sector. The latter thus absorbs the labour
surplus which agriculture and the formal sector are unable
to employ. Several quick qualitative assessments of the
impact of the crisis have been conducted in Asia and
especially in Vietnam, based on a small number of interviews
in some selected industries. They indeed put in evidence the
impact of the crisis on the informal sector in terms of
employment, number of hours worked and wages. But, due to
the lack of data, no quantitative study of the impact of the
crisis on the informal sector had been conducted until now.
This is precisely the objective of this policy brief, based
on the results of two rounds of Household Business &
Informal Sector (HB&IS) surveys conducted on a
statistically representative sample in Hanoi and HCMC in
2007 and 2009 within an international research project
between Vietnam's General Statistics Office (GSO) and
the French Institute. This brief can be usefully
complemented by two companion papers: the first one presents
the adjustment of the labour market and the informal economy
nationwide the second one provides detailed results on the
dynamics of the informal sector in the two main cities
between 2007 and 2009.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Cling, Jean-Pierre; Chi, Nguyen Huu; Razafindrakoto, Mireille; Roubaud, Francois. 2010. How Deep Was the Impact of the Economic Crisis in Vietnam?: A Focus on the Informal Sector in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27582 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”