Vietnam’s economy expands 7.31% in Q3

Bloomberg

Vietnam’s economic growth quickened in the third quarter, underpinned by solid growth in exports and manufacturing.
Gross domestic product rose 7.31 percent from a year earlier, up from a revised 6.73 percent in the second quarter, the General Statistics Office in Hanoi said on Saturday.
That compared to a median estimate of 6.7 percent in a Bloomberg survey of four economists.
The economy expanded 6.98 percent in the nine months through September from a year earlier, data from the statistics office showed.
“Manufacturing is the main driver of economic growth in the first nine months of the year, followed by services,” Nguyen Bich Lam, head of General Statistics Office, said at Hanoi briefing on Saturday.
Exports rose 8.2 percent in the first nine months of 2019 from the same period in 2018, while imports climbed 8.9 percent.
The US-China trade war is weighing on global growth and hurting prospects for export-reliant nations like Vietnam. At the same time, it’s also creating positive spillovers as businesses shift production from China to Vietnam to bypass tariffs. Foreign direct investment and exports have climbed this year.
Vietnam’s central bank earlier this month cut interest rates for the first time in more than two years to help support the economy amid rising global risks.
Consumer prices rose 1.98 percent in September from a year earlier.
The government aims to cap average inflation at 4 percent this year.
Vietnam could end the year with an inflation rate of less than 3 percent, lower than the government’s 4 percent target as food prices remain stable, said Do Thi Ngoc, head of the consumer prices department at the General Statistics Office.
Vietnam’s nine-month agricultural output growth slowed to 2.02 percent from 3.7 percent a year earlier, said Le Trung Hieu, head of agriculture in the statistics office. African swine fever has reduced the nation’s hog herd by 19 percent, contributing to the decelerating of agriculture production growth, Hieu added.