An investigation on Vietnam’s public debt solvency implies that, by the end of 2010, the public debt-to-GDP, external debt to GDP, and external public debt to GDP ratios were over 55%, 40%, and 30% respectively. It is hard to say whether they went over safety levels, since different research produced different warnings for different countries. For example, Li et al (2010) pointed out that Eastern European and Central Asian countries were normally in crises with their external debt to GDP ratio surging to highs between 42% and 88%. Meanwhile, low and lower middle income countries fell into crises with a much lower ratio. External and external public debt in these economies before crises occurred accounted for less than 40% of GDP. However, it is noticeable that Vietnam’s solvency situation has been deteriorating rapidly in recent
years. According to the MoF statistics, within two years, from 2008 to 2010, its public debt to GDP ratio rose by over 20 percentage points, from 36.2% to 57.3%, while the external public debt to GDP ratio also went up over 6 percentage points, from 25.1% to above 31.1%. The increasing trend clearly threatens Vietnam’s financial safety and the country needs to respond in a timely fashion. In addition, Vietnam’s public debt to total budget revenue ratio is also rising rapidly. In particular, by the end of 2010, total public debt was about double of the total budget revenue,up from 1.6 times in 2008. Meanwhile, state budget remains in deep deficit in the last few years and there are no signs of improvement
in the near future. State budget projections imply that the government will continue to carry out expansionary fiscal policies with annual budget deficit of approximately 5% of GDP. As a consequence, the public debt to GDP ratio will certainly not halt at the current level of around 57%.