April 08, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka and Vietnam can boost bi-lateral trade by opening trade with a few items, and promoting interaction by reciprocal arrangements to participate in trade fairs, officials said.
“Trade is 180 percent of gross domestic product, making Vietnam one of the most open countries in the world,” Truong said.
“The world average for trade is 50 percent.”
From 1986, Vietnam stopped its controlled and planned economy, started giving citizens and others property rights, liberalized market prices and invited investors from around the world to come to Vietnam.
The country now gets about 10 billion US dollars of foreign investment a year.
After the East Asian crisis, it started to focus more on economic and exchange rate stability and has managed to slash poverty.
Vietnam’s economy overheated in recent years with high credit growth due to ‘stimulus’ and the country’s central bank has since hit the brakes to prevent further exchange rate depreciation and inflation. During a visit of Vietnam’s President to Sri Lanka last year, the leaders of the two countries had set a target of a billion US dollars in trade.
Vietnam’s ambassador to Colombo Ton Sinh Thanh told