Key View

• The US’s rising trade deficit with Vietnam, exacerbated by the ongoing trade war between the US and several major global exporters, increases the risk of Vietnamese exports coming under punitive tariffs from the US.
• However, given Washington’s view that an unchecked China poses a major security threat, we believe that the US’ need to

Key View

• At Fitch Solutions, we maintain our forecast for Vietnam’s fiscal deficit to remain wide at 5.7% in 2019, following a revised 5.9% fiscal deficit recorded in 2018.
• We continue to expect Vietnam’s open-door trade policy and the slow progress of SOE divestment to pressure revenue collection.
• However, falling yields of newly issued

Key View:

• The expansion of Vietnam’s road network will continue in the next decade in order to support growing freight transport volumes due a projected increase in economic activity.
• The construction of expressways linking the north and south, and ring-roads around urban areas to ease congestion will be main drivers of growth of the road

Key View

• We at Fitch Solutions believe that Vietnam’s aggressive efforts to grow its foreign diplomatic network will continue over the coming quarters.
• We expect the strengthening of foreign relationships to bode well for FDI inflow and Vietnam’s goal of becoming a global manufacturing hub.

We expect Vietnam to continue pressing ahead with

Key View

• We expect coal-powered generation growth to increase rapidly over the next decade and to dominate Vietnam’s power sector expansion. We forecast coal-powered generation to grow at an average of 10.1% y-o-y to reach about 50.5% of the power mix by 2028.
• This is due to relatively slow supply growth from traditional sources of energy such

Key View:

• Vingroup to focus on cost and its strong brand name to sell domestically
• Vietnam remains an attractive destination for the manufacture of consumer electronics, but rising labour costs present a downside risk

Vingroup JSC, Vietnam’s largest listed company by market capitalisation will begin manufacturing Vsmart branded smartphones

Key View

• Vietnam will provide lucrative opportunities over the long-term for pharmaceutical and healthcare firms.
• The country is attracting greater foreign investment into its domestic pharmaceutical industry.
• Risks remain for drugmakers seeking to distribute their innovative products in the country.

Pharmaceutical Sector Remains An

Key View

• Expansion of universal health coverage will continue to stimulate the development of Vietnam's medicine and healthcare market.
• In 2017, health expenditure in Vietnam amounted to VND369trn (USD16.2bn) in 2017, with the government accounting for just over 56% of the total. We expect this to grow to VND1,044trn (USD41.8bn) by 2027.
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