Vietnam’s inflation last month, 27%, reached highest position in asia. Prices of everything go all the way up, especially necessities like gasoline, food and clothes (e.g: food prices increased 74%). Overdose foreign investment and technologically backward industry seemed to be the causes. Besides, overty rate has reduced to 15% from 58% since 1993, but now it is likely to raise again. Some workers who led vietnam’s rise from poverty are suffering from expensive city life, planning to return to their rural home. The people become disappointed as they see no efficient solution from the government. However, most economists think this period is just a temporary bump in growth.
Detailed information from the article:
- “the government raised the price of gasoline by 31 percent to an all-time high of 19,000 dong ($1.19) per liter (or roughly $4.50 a gallon). Diesel and kerosene prices rose still higher.”
- “people are cutting back on food, limiting travel, looking for second jobs, delaying major purchases and waiting for the cost of a wedding to go down before marrying.”
- “rumors of price increases have caused panic buying of fuel and rice.”
- “vietnam is suffering from the worldwide economic downturn and from high inflation that has spread through southeast asia.”
- “as dong, drops in value, people say they are moving their money into dollar bank accounts”
Analysis
- General type of inflation: galloping
Normally, an inflation rate of 1-2% is acceptable for an economy (it usually goes with growth rate of 3-5%). Galloping inflation is 10-20% rate and begins to get out of control. In this case, vietnamese inflation rate has increas ...