Vietnam at a Crossroads

Daria Taglioni, Claire Hollweg, Richard Record

Vietnam is at a crossroads. It can grow as an export platform for GVCs, specializing in low value-added assembly functions with industrialization occurring in enclaves with little connection to the broader economy or society; or it can leverage the current wave of growth, enabled and accelerated by its successful participation in GVCs, to diversify and move up the chain into higher value-added functions. Success will require Vietnam's policymakers to view the processes of development differently, and to take new realities of the global economy more fully into account. The purpose of this volume is to support Vietnam's path to economic prosperity by identifying policies and targeted interventions that will drive development through leveraging GVC participation that take major shifts in trade policy and rapid technological advances in ICT into account. The volume is based on a...