Vietnam's economy grew at about 8.4 percent this year, state media quoted a government minister as saying this week, while new data showed annual inflation also rose at above eight percent.
The General Statistics Office (GSO) estimated consumer prices rose 12.6 percent in December against the same month last year, and by 8.3 percent for 2007 as a whole, driven in part by higher food and fuel prices.
Planning and Investment Minister Vo Hong Phuc told a weekend cabinet meeting that economic growth for 2007 would reach an estimated 8.44 percent, representing per capita gross domestic product of 833 dollars for the year, state media reported.
Final and revised GDP and other economic data were to be publicly released before the end of the month. Vietnam joined the World Trade Organisation in January. The minister also said foreign direct investment pledges had leapt to more than 20 billion dollars for the year, up from 12 billion dollars in 2006, according to the Sai Gon Giai Phong (Liberated Saigon) newspaper.
The state media report said export revenues-mainly from oil, textiles and footwear, electronics, seafood, rice and coffee-reached 48.3 billion dollars, but the trade deficit hit a new peak of 12.4 billion dollars.
The newspaper report also said the United States had now replaced the European Union as Vietnam's top export market, with the economies accounting for 22 and 19 percent of export revenues respectively. Vietnam-which has emerged in a generation from a war-shattered command economy into one of Asia's fastest growing economies-aims to become a middle-income nation, with annual per capita GDP of 1,000 dollars, by 2010.
The cost of goods and services is set to spiral up another 1.8 percent next month ahead of the traditional Tet lunar New Year celebrations in February, the country's main holiday, said Trade and Industry Minister Vu Huy Hoang.
Phuc said Vietnam created almost 1.7 million new jobs and sent 82,500 migrant labourers abroad in 2007. Recent media reports have said overseas Vietnamese remittances are now estimated at six billion dollars a year.
In tourism, billed as a promising growth sector, Vietnam received more than four million foreign visitors, up 16.4 percent year-on-year, the report said. In foreign aid, international donors pledged a record 5.4 billion dollars official development assistance, about half of it for projects such as roads, ports and power generation, to ease Vietnam's economic bottlenecks.