Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam will be one of the few nations worldwide torecord positive economic growth in 2020 despite a global collapse in trade,travel and investment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an article recentlypublished by the English language news media publishing group Asia Times.

Vietnam’s relative economic success is somewhat surprising considering that thecountry’s government has affirmed that it won’t put economic recovery ahead ofpublic health, it noted.

Vietnam is not only the envy of its COVID-hit Southeast Asian neighbours, butit has also earned international plaudits for its resilience, according to thearticle.

The article cited the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index published last month,which revealed that Vietnam’s international image was one of the Asia-Pacific’sbest improvers this year, with its score on diplomatic influence gaining sixpercentage points.

Earlier this year, Vietnam had the third-highest improvement in internationalreputation because of its handling of the pandemic.

In some ways, Vietnam had advantages over its Southeast Asian neighbours, thearticle continued.

The service sector accounted for 45 percent of Vietnam’s GDP last year but grewby just 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2020, down from 6.5 percent in thesame period last year.

“Vietnam’s economy is also less dependent than other Southeast Asian nations ontourism, which accounted for 9 percent of its GDP in 2018, compared with 32percent for Cambodia and 20 percent for Thailand. It has thus faced lesspressure due to the collapse of international travel”.

The country also went into 2020 on the back of two years of robust foreigndirect investment flows. In June, Vietnam ratified the EU-Vietnam Free TradeAgreement and recently play host to a signing ceremony for the RegionalComprehensive Economic Partnership, the world’s largest, Asia-centric tradepact which Vietnam is now a member.

According to the article, the IMF in its latest reported noted that Hanoi’s ‘decisivesteps to contain the health and economic fallout from COVID-19’ were a primaryreason for positive economic growth this year, a recognition of the CommunistParty of Vietnam’s quick and competent response.

The IMF expects that recovery to carry over strongly into 2021 with growth of6.5 percent as normalisation of domestic and foreign economic activitycontinues.

In the first nine months of the year, Vietnam recorded 21.2 billion USD in newforeign investment projects and overseas capital injections, equivalent toaround 80 percent of the investment it received over the same period last year.

Many of the investments made this year won’t begin operations until 2021 orlater, which also points to a healthy economic recovery./.