he past few years have been challenging for the Vietnamese economy. The heady growth years that followed the beginning of doi moi1 when the country opened to the global economy and international trade for the first time were, incredibly, over a quarter of a century ago. We know. We were there. DHL was in fact the first international logistics company to set up shop in Vietnam in 1988.
Over the years, we’ve seen the pace of economic growth slow and even stall a couple of times as a result of global recessions and the Asian financial crisis. However since 2012, we’ve noted a significant pick-up in the global demand for exports. The World Bank reports that world trade grew steadily to 3.3 per cent in 2014 and that global gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to be up by 3.6 per cent this year2. For members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank predicts GDP growth of 2.3 per cent this year and 2.4 per cent next year, whereas for the BRIC countries those figures are double – 5.1 per cent this year and 5.5 per cent the next.