VietNamNet Bridge – The farm produce exports in big quantities
have put Vietnam on a respectable position on the world’s economy map. However,
the title of the king in farm produce export still cannot help Vietnam fulfill
its dream of developing high technologies to serve the modernization.
Figures can talk
Vietnamese people believe that
the fame of the world’s big farm produce exporter would help it stand firmly in
the global economic crisis. They believe that the economic difficulties would
force people to fasten their belt and they would only spend money on the most
essential goods – the main export items of Vietnam.
Therefore, the statement by Apple
about the sale of 5 million iPhone 5s just within three days of launching
iPhone 5 into the market was incredible to many people.
An iPhone 5 is now sold at 25
million dong in Vietnam, or 1100 dollars. This means that the five million
iPhones sold would be valued 5 billion dollars.
Meanwhile, Vietnam only earned
9.7 billion dollars’ worth of export turnover in September 2012, and earned
83.789 billion dollars in the first nine months of the year.
As such, the sales of iPhone 5s
within just three days are equal to 50 percent of Vietnam’s total export
turnover in September 2012.
If compared the iPhone 5 sales
with the turnover of the 18 export items with the turnover higher than one
billion dollars, one would see that the iPhone 5 sales would be only lower than
garment exports (11.25 billion dollars), crude oil (6.34 billion dollars),
while equal to electronics (5.36 billion dollars). Especially, the sales of
iPhone 5 are much higher than seafood export turnover (4.14 billion dollars)
and wooden furniture (3.39 billion dollars).
Vietnam, the second biggest rice
exporter in the world, got 2.87 billion dollars from rice exports in the first
nine months of the year, or just equal to 50 percent of the sales of iPhone 5
just within three days.
The report by the National
Assembly’s Economics Committee named “From macroeconomic instability to the
restructuring process” has pointed out that the competitive edges built up on
the ownership of natural resources and cheap labor force, labor intensive and
low-technology content industries are facing the unsustainable development.
Only high technology content and labor skills, good infrastructure and
management capability can decide the competitive capacity of a nation.
The value of creation
The report by UN Comtrade showed
biggest changes in the world’s industrial production over the last 10 years,
pointing out that the MVA of the high-tech content industries has been
increasing more rapidly than in many other sectors.
A Vietnamese worker reportedly
creates a too low MVA if compared with that in regional countries and in the
world, while the problem has not been improved over the last 10 years.
In 2000, the MVA of a Vietnamese
worker was 1/3.5 of a Chinese worker, 1/3 of Indonesian, 1/5 of Thai, and 1/20
of Malaysian.
After 10 years, the figures
remain very low – 1/5, 1/3, 1/5.5 and 1/10, respectively. The ratio of MVA/GDP
of Vietnam is also the lowest in the region, just accounting for 20 percent of
GDP, while the figures are 34 percent for China and Thailand.
The problem not only lies in the
small industrial added value created, but also in the low content of the
technologies in production. The industries with medium and high technology
content just account for 25 percent of the industrial value in 2005-2009, much
lower than the 60 percent of Thailand, Malaysia and China.
According to UNIDO, the
technology content of Vietnamese industries that make products for export
nearly has not changed over the last 10 years.
Only 12-13 percent of industries
use high technologies, 10 percent medium technologies, and 60 percent low
technologies.
Tam Thoi
Business & Investment Opportunities
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