Vietnam Targets Q4 Growth of 7.1-7.7%

Vietnam targets economic growth in the final quarter of this year of 7.1-7.7%, a government senior official said late Saturday, VNA reported. The rate will help the country achieve full-year growth of 6.3-6.5%, government spokesman Mai Tien Dung told a news conference. “The speed of economic growth will affect public debt,” Dung said. The government this month lowered Vietnam’s 2016 gross domestic product growth target to 6.3-6.5% from a previous target of 6.7% after the economy slowed in the first nine months of the year. Lower GDP is expected to push Vietnam’s public debt ratio closer to a ceiling of 65% of GDP and pose more challenges for Vietnam’s already tight state budget, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said last week in an address to the country’s national assembly. Adverse weather, including drought in the coffee belt, and soil salinity in the Mekong Delta, have put the brakes on Vietnam’s rapid growth, biting into its industrial and agricultural production, its exports and imports.