home donate

Eng   Tiếng Việt

essential HELP: a weblog
international and community development in Vietnam

Posts Tagged ‘economic development’

Weekly News Roundup: First Week of January 2013

Friday, January 11th, 2013

The weekly news roundup is back! In the first full week of the new year, we’ve already got a lot of interesting things to catch you up on. Check out some of our selected readings below!

(more…)

Economic Update: Vietnam’s Macro Future

Thursday, June 14th, 2012

When the world’s largest development agency speaks, the rest of the NGO/NPO community listens–whether to critique, scrutinize or get new ideas from.

Following its May update on the East Asia and Pacific region, the World Bank has released the results of the mid-year World Bank  Group-Vietnam consultative discussions and made public the newest Vietnam country cooperative strategy for 2012 – 2016. We’ve been soaking up all the information these two reports have to offer. Between the cooperation strategy and consultative discussion, there are over 200 pages of material. Much of it underscores what many us can feel instinctivelly: that after a quarter century of model development, Vietnam’s growth has slowed; that much of Vietnam’s earlier growth came at the expense of the environment and plans for sustainable must be set in motion; and that Vietnam’s human capital, infrastructure and innovation systems must be developed for it to avoid the “middle income trap.” But all is not grim–buttressed by a young workforce and a strong export portfolio (for the time being), Vietnam has plenty of potential to tap into.

So that you can avoid pouring days over the two reports, we’ve perused, combined and summarized highlights from both.

(more…)

Economic Update: A Snapshot of Vietnam’s Macroeconomic Situation

Friday, May 25th, 2012

When you’re dedicated to poverty reduction and community development, it’s important to keep up with the latest economic headlines. Economics, poverty, and development often go hand-in-hand, whether it’s through creating stable employment or through sculpting an ecosystem that gives budding entrepreneurs a chance to start their own enterprises. The relationship between the three isn’t always simple, but they’re all highly dependent on one another.

(more…)