Vietnam - Vietnam spends $4.8b repaying Govt debts since early 2011, amount seen rising

Vietnam has spent around 100 trillion dong ($4.8 billion) on repaying government debts since the beginning of 2011, including 29.9 trillion dong ($1.43 billion) in the year-to-April 15, and the amount is forecasted to rise in the coming years.

Vietnam paid between 40 trillion dong and 45 trillion dong principal per annum in the 2006-2010 period, economist Vu Dinh Anh, deputy director of the Institute for Market and Pricing under the Ministry of Finance, said at a conference on restructuring public investment and state-owned enterprises.

The figure would continue rising up in the coming years to 14 percent-16 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), Anh predicted, given the foreign exchange rate adjustments.

Data from the Ministry of Finance showed that the country's public debt decreased to 54.6 percent of the GDP at the end of 2011 from as high as 56.6 percent at end 2010, but the ratio is forecast to widen to 58.4 percent by this year's end, Anh cited.

The government debt will increase to 46.1 percent of GDP at end-2012, from 43.6 percent a year earlier. Foreign debts, meanwhile, were estimated at $50 billion at end-2011, equivalent to 41.5 percent of GDP, according to the data.

For 2012, Vietnam planned to spend 100 trillion dong ($4.76 billion) to pay back government debts and aids (98.85 trillion dong for debts), up 16.3 percent on year and accounting for 11 percent of the country's state budget expenditures for the year.

Nguyen Xuan Thanh, a fellow at the Fulbright programme, feared that the public debt could quicken to 70 percent GDP in the coming years on GDP slowdown as economic restructure undergoes.

DVT | StoxPlus

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